


satisfied with haiku, until i met you

by The_Blonde



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-04 12:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10991133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "Mark’s voice alone is glorious. He talks about everything like he’s reciting poetry, standing centre stage making sure everyone at the back can hear him; a smooth melodic voice that seems on a different frequency from any other voice that Jack has ever heard in his life. His smile is a thousand flash lights going off at once and he had sat down beside Jack and said, “hi,” likehiwas the title of a sonnet."Or: Jack starts a band to impress Mark. Which is slightly dramatic, considering that the only things they’ve ever said to each other are “hi”, “how was your summer?” and “can you pass me the red pen please?”, but then Jack is just a slightly dramatic person. A (sort of) Sing Street AU.





	satisfied with haiku, until i met you

Ms. Wojcicki looks disappointed. Which is fine. Jack’s used to that. He pulls the sleeves of his grey blazer over his grey shirt and tries to smile at her. (Wasted; she’s not looking at his face as she’s too focused on his lack of grey tie. Which is probably still hanging in his wardrobe at home. He hopes so anyway.)

“ _Green_ , Jack?” she says, despairingly, as though green is the worst colour he could have chosen. “Green?”

“It’s _my_ hair,” he replies. He would maybe have picked another colour if he’d had time though. Green clashes horribly with the college colour palate of all-grey-everything. “And it’s a light green. Look.”

“The exact shade of green isn’t the issue here. It’s more the fact that the green exists at all.”

“I wanted to brighten the place up.” Jack grins at her, with all his teeth, the smile that usually never fails at home. It, actually, usually never fails with Ms. Wojcicki, whose exasperated expression always has a degree of fondness that those of his other teachers never do. 

It fails now. “You need to wash it out. Tonight. And also, you know I’m going to have to give you detention. Again.”

“I’m already at a month,” Jack reminds her, as if she’s forgotten. He can see her desk calendar, covered with tiny letter J’s, in circles. With sad faces. “After the whole bunsen burner thing.”

“I’ll add this on,” she says. “You know, it really is a shame, with all your potential, that you continuously feel the need to-”

Jack jumps to his (grey shoed) feet and says, “I know. I know. I’ll wash it out. I promise.”

“Why are you so unhappy here?”

Jack stops, still balanced on his toes. “In college? In this town?”

“Anywhere. But mainly in college.”

Jack says, “Do you ever think-”, but hasn’t even finished the thought that led to the words. Ms. Wojcicki looks hopeful and then sad as the word _think_ deflates onto the floor between them.

“Do I ever think what?” 

“That there’s too much grey?”

“In college? In this town? In _life_?”

Jack says, “In any of those things,” followed by, “I’m sorry. About the detention and the not living up to my potential. I’m sorry.”

He kicks his (grey) satchel all the way down the (grey) corridor. His mother, tapping the steering wheel of her Citroen, gives his hair a look of such horror that she almost can’t open the passenger side door. She says, “Jack, when did that happen?” as though his hair had magically changed colour on its own.

He shrugs. “Just thought I’d try it.”

“You did this in school?”

“Maybe?” one of the sinks in the cleanest college bathroom is now (probably permanently) stained bottle green. Ms. Wojcicki hadn’t found it yet. “I just wanted-”

His mother touches her hand to his hair, quiffed from his forehead. “Another new look to try out? How long is this one going to last?” When he doesn’t answer she says, “And I suppose you’re late because you’ve been in detention again?”

“No,” he says. His mother’s face brightens. He adds, “I was being _given_ detention,” and her face falls. “They’re adding it on. To the last one.” 

She sighs, a huff of breath that blends nicely into the Citroen's engine spluttering to life. “I know that you’re not happy there, Jack, but, please, just try. For me.”

Jack says, “Ma,” which is mean because she hates when he calls her that, and, “Why is everyone telling me I’m unhappy? I’m not unhappy. I’m _fine_.”

When they get home his mother announces, “No one mention Jack’s hair please,” just as both his brothers and one of his sisters are opening their mouths to do just that. No one does until dinner, when his father, unable to hold it in anymore, says, “This is the next step on your teenage rebellion list then, Sean?” and Jack knows it’s probably serious because his real name only ever makes an appearance when things are serious. (Jack is a pet name, a nickname, as fond and cozy as a favourite sweater that he never wants to take off). His father says, “You know, we pay a lot for you to go to that school, and look at the state of you,” which he always says, and Jack says, “I never asked to go there,” which he always says, and the whole thing (as usual) culminates in Jack stomping up to his room, making sure he hits every single creaking floorboard on the way. 

His bedroom is at the top of the house, in a fourth storey that is awkwardly perched on top of the rest of the building, like an inexperienced Minecraft player trying to finish off someone else’s homestead. It’s rather like him, he supposes: the last minute addition to a family that was already too big by most people’s standards, the permanent fixture of Mr. Avidan’s detention room, the inconvenient splash of colour in a college, in an _island_ , that’s almost completely devoid of it. 

He sits on his windowsill, legs stretched out on the eaves in front of him, and looks out at the harbour. He likes, sometimes, to watch the boats coming and going, to imagine where they’re going. 

(“Liverpool,” his father always says when he comes into Jack’s room, banging his head on the slanted ceiling. “They’re only sailing to Liverpool. Where else would they be going?”

“Anywhere,” Jack says. “They could be going anywhere other than here.”)

One of his sisters sneaks him dessert (apple pie which, he notes guiltily, is his favourite). She sits beside him while he eats and says, softly, “You still like looking at the harbour?”

“It reminds me,” Jack replies, licking the spoon clean, “that there’s a world outside of this place.”

“It’s the Isle of Man, Jackie, it’s not _prison_.”

“Feels like it sometimes.”

“Well now you’re just being dramatic.”

“I’m a dramatic person.”

“ _No way_ ,” she says, sarcastically but fondly. “And you hide it so well.”

\---

The green doesn’t wash out. If anything, it somehow brightens itself into a luminous peppermint. When Mr. Hurley notices it, he stops straight in the middle of handing back last week’s Psychology papers, mouth twitching like he’s not sure whether or not to laugh.

Mark is next to him. Jack and Mark are not usually allowed to sit near each other because of what Mr. Hurley had dryly explained as, “The volume of your combined voices causing me actual physical pain.” Yet Mark always seems to end up sat next to him, no matter what the seating plan says. 

“Jack,” Mr. Hurley begins, with a tiny lilt at the end that could be a question, and then gives up. 

“You look like a stem of broccoli,” says Shane, from across the row. “The smallest stem in the patch.”

“Or a scoop of ice cream,” Mr. Hurley adds, reluctantly. 

They’re halfway through the lesson when Mark leans over and attempts to whisper, “I like your hair.”

It’s not a whisper because it’s Mark. Mr. Hurley says, “Mark!”

Jack attempts to whisper back. “Thanks.”

It’s not a whisper because it’s him. Mr. Hurley says, “Jack!”

He adds _I like your hair_ to the list of things that Mark Fischbach has ever said to him. It’s a new one, given that it’s not _Hi_ , _How was your summer_ , _Can you pass me the red pen please?_ , or the glorious day that Mark had said _Hi Jack_ when they’d seen each other in town. This one is an actual opinion, an actual noticing of him by Mark, of Mark liking something to do with him. It makes any amount of detention worthwhile. It makes him want to dye his hair all the colours of the rainbow at once. 

Mark smiles at him. Mark has a great smile, blinding, like you should shield your eyes from it. Jack feels his cheeks flush just from the glow and has to look away.

\---

(The list of things that Jack has said to Mark Fischbach consists of _Hi_ , _Okay, I guess_ , _Here you go_ , and now _Thanks_.

The list of things that Jack has thought about saying to Mark Fischbach is longer and has a lot more use of the word _please_.)

\---

Felix says, “What the fuck?” Felix says _fuck_ a lot, in a variety of ways to express emotion. This one is long and drawn out. He repeats, “Seriously, what the fuck?”

Jack pulls at one single blade of grass coloured hair. “Shut up.”

“You’re- I mean, you’re gonna wash that out, right?”

“I can’t. I never can. Mark likes it.”

Felix sighs, epically. “Well if Mark likes it then everything you own will be dyed green by the end of the day.”

Jack rolls his eyes as if he hasn’t already considered this. Multiple times.

\---

Mark had exploded into Jack’s life and heart and soul around nine months ago. And Jack hadn’t really looked at him, at first, just glanced up as Mr. Hurley said, “Oh, um, maybe not next to Jack,” while a loud American voice replied, “No, I’m good here, thanks,” and the whole desk jolted as he sat down. (Mark always seems too loud, too _much_ , for any space that he’s in. His elbows and knees are constantly knocking Jack’s, and he’s incapable of making notes without taking over their entire workspace, arms stretched out).

Mark’s voice alone is glorious. He talks about everything like he’s reciting poetry, standing centre stage, making sure everyone at the back can hear him, a smooth melodic voice that seems on a different frequency from any other voice that Jack has ever heard in his life. His smile is a thousand flash lights going off at once and he had sat down beside Jack and said, “Hi,” like _Hi_ was the title of a sonet. Jack blinked, blinded by the colours that weren’t grey, and squeaked, “Hi,” back, as small and quiet as his voice has ever been. 

Mark had been wearing the standard uniform, of course. Even in all grey he was, and is, kaleidoscopic. 

“Who is he,” Jack said to Felix. “Who is he, who is he, who-”

They were hiding behind the bike shelters so that Felix could smoke and pretend that he was enjoying it. He didn’t, he only smoked because he thought it made him look angsty and interesting, if angsty and interesting also included coughing and spluttering ash everywhere. 

Felix, between coughs, said, “I told you. American exchange. I see him down at the harbour, sometimes. His parents must have a boat there too.”

(Felix’s father has a boat that no one ever uses. Felix says he’s going to steal it one day and sail back to Sweden, where everything is candle coloured, golds and purples, and Jack can come with him. “What’s it like?” Jack said, intrigued by this suggestion. “Sweden?”

Felix, confused, said, “I don’t remember.”)

“Why would you come here from America?”

Felix sighed. “How would I know? Ask him.”

Jack wouldn’t though. Ask him, that is. Every Psychology lesson Mark bounded into the seat next to him, whatever the seating chart said, and would exclaim, “Hi!” and Jack would say, “Hi,” back when he really wanted to say _Hi how are you where have you been who have you been with tell me everything there ever is to know about you_ , and be secretly and unrequitedly in love with him, and that’s all there ever was to it.

\---

“How do you know he likes it?” Felix asks, attempting to return to the actual conversation.

“He told me. He actually leaned over and said, I like your hair. To my face.”

Felix looks impressed, almost. Felix’s facial expressions never go far beyond aloof and disinterested, with a touch of obnoxiousness. “What did you say?”

“I said thanks.”

“And after that?”

Jack looks out across the crowds of students in their identical grey blazers and says, “I didn’t say anything.”

Felix, having progressed to just holding a lit cigarette between his fingers instead of pretending he actually enjoys smoking it, clasps his hand to his face and says, “Jack. C’mon.”

“What else could I say?”

“Literally anything. Anything. It’s been months.”

“I don’t have any reason to speak to him.”

“You sit next to each other! Every Tuesday and Thursday! Pretend you’re failing-”

“I don’t need to pretend that.”

“-and that you need extra tuition.”

“That probably won’t work,” Jack replies, doubtfully. He’s fairly sure Mark is failing Psychology too, judging by the dreamy expression he has on his face through every class, and the way he never looks at the grade results of any of their papers. Jack knows all of these things because he spends Psychology staring at Mark. “He’s in one of your classes, right?”

“He’s in my photography class,” Felix says. “Hey, which reminds me, you need to help me with an assignment this weekend.”

Felix’s photographs are all black and white and mostly of single branches falling into puddles, or single leaves caught on a breeze. This effect can only be achieved by Jack standing just off camera and throwing things into the air when Felix tells him to. Felix names every photograph like it’s a 1975 album and makes Jack spend ages looking at them so Felix can judge what he _feels_.

“I want to do the next one in the series,” Felix continues. “I thought we could go to South Barrule.”

“The pebble series?” Jack asks. The pebble series is a collection of photos of pebbles piled on top of each other. It’s called _i wish i could look at these things with you for you are the only one who truly understands me_. He then says, “What does Mark take photos of?”

“He doesn’t really show his stuff,” Felix says. “He used to take photos of bands and stuff, he said, back in Ohio, but, I mean, who’s gonna be in a band around here, right?”

Jack looks back at the waves of identical grey and says, “Right.”

\---

By the end of the day there’s a posted notice, written in ornate calligraphy that’s almost impossible to read. It says:

You may have noticed that one of your peers has decided to dye his hair green. This is not condoned at Saint Cecilia’s and should not be copied. We do not encourage these displays of blatant rebellion and the student concerned has been appropriately dealt with.

Mr. Avidan has to read it out, at the start of detention, and says, “And yet, still green.”

“It should say that they don’t encourage displays of _individuality_ ,” Jack says, but it still hurts. He’s had many, many, detentions, but never an actual notice about him. “And I think it’s permanent. Like, accidentally permanent.”

Mr. Avidan, who is pretty cool actually and is the only teacher in the whole place who doesn’t tell Jack to _Watch your tone!_ on a daily basis, says, “I couldn’t possibly pass comment on any displays of individuality in this school.”

“Because there aren’t any.”

Jack is the only person in detention, as is frequently the case. The green hair detention tagged on to the the bunsen burner detention which was after the setting the frogs free from the biology lab detention, which he _thinks_ was the aftermath of the flood detention. Saint Cecilia’s didn’t even  have a detention programme until he got to sixth form. 

Mr. Avidan, the type of accidental teacher who still thinks he’s in his early twenties and can _understand_ misbehaving teenagers, likes to sit Jack in the table furthest from the door and perch on his own desk, giving life advice that Jack only half listens to. Right now, he says, “That’s all very angsty and such, but-”

“I have to get off this island,” Jack says. “You don’t understand.”

“Get off this island by doing what?” Mr. Avidan asks, not unreasonably. “By failing every single A Level you’re trying to take? By making me stay two hours after class every day because you’re always in detention? By _always_ being the only student in this school to even get detention?”

“I’m not good at anything. And none of that’s on purpose. I’m just unlucky. The flood was absolutely not my fault.”

“Everyone’s good at something.” Jack likes Mr. Avidan, he really does, but he can sometimes turn into a _Follow your dreams!_ meme, like the sloth shooting rainbows from his claws. “You’re good at stuff. You’re good at-”

“Being obnoxiously loud?”

“I wouldn’t use the word obnoxiously.”

“Everyone else does.”

“You’re good at,” Mr Avidan begins, and valiantly tries to continue, “You’re good at-”

Jack waits.

“Being the centre of attention,” Mr Avidan finally, triumphantly, says. “You could be an actor. Or one of those guys on the internet that records themselves playing video games or whatever. Or be in a band. Or, like-”

“Something _realistic_.”

“You used to be good at English,” Mr. Avidan attempts. “Didn’t you? Your grades in that were really-”

(Mr. Karim is the English teacher. He had started, as the months went on, looking sadder and sadder as Jack’s grades crept steadily down from A to F.)

Jack says, “I don’t remember,” which is a lie. He remembers. 

“I don’t know what else to say to you, man,” Mr. Avidan shrugs so hard that every last one of his 70’s rocker curls bounce with the motion. “I’m not the careers counsellor.” 

(He actually is. It’s embossed on the classroom door and everything, underneath the Head of Music banner. Jack doesn’t point this out.)

\---

Mark says, “Hi,” and his hair is bright red. Scarlet in fact. When he sits beside Jack they look like a pair of tulips, one of which is leaning, head bowing, towards the sun.

Jack says, “Hi,” back, around five minutes too late, and then, desperately grabbing at words, “I like your hair.”

Mark laughs, a beautiful bubbling sound that rises right from his chest. “Thanks.”

He waits for Jack to say something else. Jack knows this is the point in the conversation where he’s supposed to say something, anything, stumbles in dragging out words, and ends up saying, “Red.”

Mark blinks. “Yup. You already had the green, so, I thought-”

“You’re gonna get detention,” Jack manages, on an exhale, so the words come out as one stream of breath.

Mark says, “Hopefully,” and waits, again, an expectant look on his face, for Jack to say something else. 

What Jack wants to say is, _Hey, look at us, this whole college is grey but look at us, we’re in colour, we both are, you and me, isn’t that crazy, did you do that because I did, do you notice anything about me, you must do if-_

The expectation on Mark’s face fades into disappointment. He says, “Can you pass me the red pen, please?”

Jack has no idea how the red pen always ends up on his corner of the desk when it’s the only pen Mark ever wants to use. He passes it over saying, “Here you go.”

“It matches my hair,” Mark says, and smiles.

Jack says _It doesn’t, it’s not bright enough_ and is then amazed to find that he hasn’t actually said it aloud.

\---

“At least you’ll have company,” Felix says, in the middle of stacking three pebbles, nudging the top one at an angle. “I mean, you and Mr. Avidan are building up a real bond, but it’ll be you and Mark, in a room together, for days on end, just the-”

“Stop,” Jack says. They’re on South Barrule, amongst one of the groups of conifers, almost ankle deep in mud. “I couldn’t. I can’t speak to him. The words never make it out.”

Felix looks up. “Sure you can. You’ve spoken to him plenty this week. And it’s _you_ , when do you ever have a problem speaking to people?” He puts a leaf on top of the final pebble and sits back on his heels. “Also, he’s still trying to find people to photograph for his project. In bands and stuff.”

“I’m not in a band though.”

Felix wrinkles his nose and knocks the pebbles over. “It’s not conveying what I want it to.”

Jack looks down at the three pebbles and leaf, now scattered into the dirt. “What’s it meant to be conveying?”

“I don’t know, like, what it’s like to be us, living here and at college, and-”

Jack delicately treads one of the pebbles heavier into the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. “Take a photo of it now.”

\---

Mark doesn’t get detention. Jack thinks that maybe it’s because the red suits him, matches the light tan of his skin, the oak brown of his eyes. It’s as sunny as his personality and almost looks natural.

When they’d stood, for assembly, in their alphabetical rows (F being pretty far away from M), he and Mark had stood out, two odd splashes of colour, in waves of nothingness, and Jack had an odd sensation of not being alone. What’s the correct term for that? He never pays attention in English now. Togetherness, solidarity? He wanted to yell at Mark, again, _Look at us, we look the same_ , and he never has a problem yelling, usually, but all that came out was a small release of breath that wasn’t words at all.

\---

He’s late coming back from college (Mr. Avidan had lost the keys to lock up and they’d had to go on an epic quest for them; a quest that neither he nor Mr. Avidan had summoned up much urgency for) and so he eats dinner alone, sitting on the windowsill with his legs stretched out on the eaves of the roof, the plate balanced on his lap. He looks at the harbour. There’s a lot of people there tonight, climbing over boats, pulling at ropes and riggings, lots of things that Jack doesn’t understand. A golden retriever is bounding around the wooden pier, tail wagging.

(His parents had tried to have the university conversation, as soon as he’d walked through the door. His dad had leaflets prepared and everything. Jack had taken them, politely, like he was supposed to, and left them in a neat stack on his bed.

“You know that money’s tight,” his mother said, apologetically. “I know that you want to go off, see more of the world, but -”

The leaflets are all for University College or, as it should be called, Jack’s Only Option. The only higher education option on this entire island and where 90% of the students from his college will end up too. Where all of his brothers and sisters have gone. Where everyone else’s brothers and sisters have gone. Where everyone else would go. Nothing special, nothing unique.)

The dog on the pier suddenly stops and then starts a joyous barking that can only mean it’s seen its owner. Jack watches it run to a figure just stepping onto the dock. A red haired figure in a grey hoodie who picks up the dog like it weighs nothing and lets it lick his cheeks. His laugh is loud enough for Jack to hear it from the roof. He recognises the timber of it instantly. He hears that laugh all the time, in dreams and out of them. 

Of course Mark has a golden retriever. Of _course_ he does. He drops the dog back to its feet and immediately lifts up its front paw, like they’re shaking hands. He keeps up a steady stream of cheerful baby talk that Jack can just about catch the echo of. 

(“It’s either pick something there or get a job,” his father said, handing him the leaflets. “But with the way you’re drifting through college at the moment-”

Jack wouldn’t say that he’s drifting through college. Drifting indicates movement, like he’s actually going towards a destination.) 

He’d only started sitting out here again, watching the harbour, because Felix had said that he saw Mark there _sometimes_. It had made him sad, after a while, to watch the boats. _They’re only going to Liverpool. Where else would they be going?_

The dog finally releases itself from Mark’s arms and trots back down the pier. Mark dusts off his knees and starts to follow. After two steps he stops and looks back over his shoulder. 

Jack freezes and prepares himself for the inevitability of being caught in Mark’s gaze. 

Mark looks at him, hesitates for a moment, and then waves, a huge sweep of his arm through the air that shouts without words. He does it three times, like he’s spelling Jack’s name in semaphore.

Jack raises his hands and does the world’s smallest wave back. The dog barks, Jack nearly knocks his dinner plate off his knees and Mark, on the pier, the light of the setting sun turning his hair copper, smiles.

\---

Jack isn’t sure when his crush on Mark (the sort of gentle crush he’s had on any number of girls and boys in his eighteen years) turned into something more, when his days felt empty unless he had, somehow, had the full sunshine of Mark’s smile on his face, like he was a dying flower whose green petals would wither and shrink unless he could just _look_ at Mark. Be looked at _by_ Mark. He doesn’t know when the line crossed from staring at the curved muscles of Mark’s arms through the light grey of his blazer into eavesdropping on every conversation Mark had. To creating an entire spreadsheet of Mark facts. Mark rock climbs. Mark has a dog. Mark is from Cincinnati. Mark likes running on the beach. Mark is loud. Mark is never angry. Mark looks amused by Jack rather than completely exasperated.

He sometimes looks at Jack, when he comes into class, expectantly, like he wants Jack to be the one to say _Hi_ first. But Jack never does, never says _Hi_ first. 

Jack has always been Too Much. Too loud, too expressive. Even Felix, sometimes, has to say, _inside voice, Jack, please_ , usually when sneaking back into his house after a broken curfew. His parents sometimes look at him, their late addition, and wonder where he came from, how he came into their studious, quiet little family. His mother spent most of his school years apologising and saying, _Oh, that’s just Jack, he gets a bit excited sometimes_ , _I’m sorry, I know Jack can be a little loud_ , or, driving back from school in her battered Citroen, “ _Jack, why do you have to be so much of everything all the time?”_

So it makes no sense, why he is unable to use his words around Mark. But then, Mark has never implied that he finds Jack too much of anything. 

On the way back from South Barrule, Felix had twirled, Disney style, very prettily, and sung, “I want much more than this provincial life!”

Jack frowned at him. 

“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere!”

Jack sighed.

“I’m being you,” Felix said. “I mean, that’s me doing an impression of you. Get it?” 

“I get it,” Jack said. 

Felix has a whole pile of leaflet options, could go wherever he wants. He speaks three languages and is good at any subject he picks up. He thinks he might go back to Stockholm, or to England, or maybe Italy. Sometimes, seriously, he says, “Jack, you could come with me. I could ask.” But Jack always says, “No, it’s okay,” because tagging along on Felix’s world wide adventures is sadder than not having one of his own, somehow. 

“It’s a joke,” Felix said, arms still outstretched. He’d nearly spun himself right off the pavement into the road, balanced on the kerb. “I didn’t - it’s not that bad, Jack. It’s not.”

Jack isn’t sure when his heart went from a tiny flutter whenever Mark said _Hi_ into a full blown beat skip. When he went from a sentence of _Oh, he’s pretty cute I guess_ into full blown epic novels on how Mark’s eyes look when the light hits them just right.

It was, maybe, sometime around the four month point, when his current detention stretch was for wearing brown shoes instead of regulation black and his parents had just said no, definitive no, to any sort of studying off the island, and he’d failed another Psychology paper after another English paper ( _”Jack”_ , said Mr Karim, _“I don’t understand how-”_ ), and so had ranted, loudly, across the murmurs of the entire class about how pointless everything was, this island, this stupid college, suffocated and stifled, and Mr. Hurley had sent him out. Everyone had filed neatly past him afterwards, buzzing with the sort of genuinely amused laughter that he tends to generate. But Mark, _Mark_ , had grabbed at his elbow and said, “I know. I know how you feel,” which was a first. And he’d waited, again, for Jack to say something and Jack had, again, said nothing aloud but in his head said, _Fuck, I love you_ , or something equally eloquent.

\---

He’s helping Felix select the best items for his portfolio when Felix, photographs of pebbles in his hands, says, “Come to a party. It’ll be fun. Everyone will be there.”

The thing about going to college on the Isle of Man is that when someone says everyone will be there they literally mean _everyone_ will be there. Jack picks up one of the better leaf photos, one that had taken twenty attempts until Felix decided it was perfect. “I can’t. I’m grounded.”

“You’re always grounded. Just sneak out.”

“I can’t _sneak_ anywhere,” Jack points out, not unreasonably. He holds up the leaf photo to Felix.

Felix frowns at it and shakes his head. “Say you’re staying at my house. We can say we’re studying and other well behaved things.”

That would work. His mother loves Felix. She thinks he’s intelligent and polite and always “well put together.” His mother values that in a person, _neatness_. Jack says, “Whose party is it?”

Felix suddenly refuses to meet his gaze.

Jack guesses, “Marzia’s?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Who cares? Whatever.”

“That’s a yes?”

Felix shrugs, fake nonchalance, and holds up the photo they’d taken on South Barrule, the pebble in the mud. “This one turned out okay, I think. You can name it, if you want.”

“I’m not good with the poetic titles.”

“You _used_ to be,” Felix points out. 

Jack hands him another leaf photo. “I’ll come to the party.”

(He _had_ been good at the poetic titles, once. Better than Felix even. He’d been good at English and good at descriptions and good at making entire lists of places he wanted to go to, things that he could write about, stories that he could tell people. He loved having an audience. His mind worked a hundred miles an hour, his voice several decibels louder than the average, he was Too Much. All that energy with nowhere to go, simmering until it exploded. Then always having to apologise for himself, the sheer too-much-ness of him.)

He repeats, “I’ll come to the party.”

Felix gives the South Barrule photo a sad look. “Okay.”

(Mr. Avidan, in his very first detention, for disrupting other students in a lesson, had said, “Hey, let’s think of some ways that we can put this, uh, _spirit_ of yours to good use, okay?” 

They haven’t found anything yet.)

\---

Mark has taken his blazer off, his biceps straining at the shirt underneath. He says, “Can you pass me the red pen, please?”

Jack, fairly sure his mouth is hanging open, hands it over. “Here you go.”

Mark says, “Thanks.”

They get last week’s papers handed back. Mark stuffs his into his satchel without even looking. Jack looks at his and instantly regrets it. He sighs, loud enough for Marzia, in the seat in front, to turn around and face him.

Mariza is as pretty and delicate as a doll, with long hair that cascades all down her back. She is also, probably, the inspiration for every single one of Felix’s pretentious photograph titles. “Don’t worry, Jack. It’s just one paper.”

One paper in a long list of papers. But she’s not to know that. He says, “Thanks Marzia,” and folds the paper up into a neat square.

“You know that I’m having a party on Friday?”

“Yeah. Felix said.”

“Oh,” she says, nonchalantly. “Felix is coming?”

“We both are. If that’s okay.”

He’s conscious of Mark, beside him, sitting up straighter, movements completely telegraphed. He may as well cup a hand around his ear and shout _I’m listening to your conversation right now, don’t mind me!_

Marzia notices and says, “You’re coming too, Mark?”

“Oh!” Mark says, surprised. “I mean. Sure. If that’s -”

“Tell Felix that I don’t care if he comes or not,” Marzia tells Jack, sunnily, flicking her hair over one shoulder. 

Felix, later, says, “Well, _I_ don’t care if she cares if I go or not.”

\---

They go. Felix keeps up the ruse of not caring whether they’re there or not until they’re actually in Marzia’s kitchen, drinking Italian beer and (in Felix’s case) trying to look obnoxiously nonchalant by draping themselves across the nearest available work surface. Marzia does not look impressed.

“Felix,” Marzia says, coolly. “You came.”

“Yeah,” Felix says, propped up on his elbows. “Whatever. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“You could come up to my room. If you wanted. Or not.”

Felix shrugs. “I guess. Later.” 

Marzia shrugs back. “Cool. I’ll see you later. Maybe.”

Felix shrugs again. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe now?” There’s a tiny element of hope in Marzia’s voice, Jack can hear it.

Felix stands up straighter. “Now? Seriously?”

“If you-”

“I do,” Felix says, earnestly. “I mean, if that’s-”

Jack who, frankly, can’t deal with much more of this and is two seconds away from pushing them out of the room himself, says, “Just go. Please,” and throws Felix a thumbs-up (that he’s sure Marzia sees) as they do just that.

\---

He hears Mark before he sees him, freezes mid-step in the motion of walking back to the living room, like the sound is holding him in place. Hears Mark’s laugh, not entirely genuine sounding. Jack doesn’t know when exactly he was able to start identifying the tone in the chords of Mark’s varying laughs but, somehow, he can tell it’s fake.

Mark stumbles into the kitchen and says, “Jack. Hi.” 

Jack stays pinned between the fridge and the counter. His vision, already wavering with alcohol, is filled suddenly with Mark. He blinks, attempts to clear his head, realises that he hasn’t said anything, thinks _Jack, this is the part where you say hi BACK_.

“I’m- I sit next to you in Psychology,” Mark says, to fill the silence.

“I know,” Jack replies, incredulous, and almost surprising himself with his tone, with how casual it sounds, like talking to Mark is nothing. His words are tipsily soft, blurred at the edges. “On Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Mark’s eyes crinkle, ever so slightly. “That’s right.”

Mark is wearing a white t-shirt that he has, apparently, cut the sleeves off of to make a vest. Jack tries very hard not to look at Mark’s arms and begins pulling the label off his bottle of beer. Mark watches him. 

Mark says, “You know,” and then stops.

“I like your hair,” Jack says, because it’s suddenly important that Mark knows this.

“You told me that already.” Mark’s eyes remain crinkled, like he’s smiling inside even if his mouth isn’t fully on board yet. 

The bottle label un-peels in one full piece, scrolled around Jack’s fingers. He says, “I can’t believe you dyed it, after that notice.”

“What can I say. I love displays of blatant rebellion.” Mark is staring at Jack’s hands. “Did I see you? The other day? I was at the harbour, and-”

“You did. I live there. Well, not at the harbour, but next to it.”

“You were on the roof.”

“Yeah. My room’s up there. I like to sit and-” the sentence stops, the list of things he’s said to Mark Fischbach starts short circuiting from the sheer amount of activity.

“Watch the boats?”

“Watch the boats,” Jack echoes. “You have a dog. I mean, if that’s your dog. I saw you with-”

“She’s my dog.” Mark lights up (almost impossible when he was already pretty lit up). “You wanna see her?”

Mark has approximately 200 photos of the dog in a folder called Chica on his phone. The phone itself only has 210 photos. There are photos of Mark and Chica on the beach, Mark and Chica on a boat, Mark and Chica at the harbour, photos of Mark staring at Chica adoringly, photos of Chica staring at Mark adoringly. Jack looks at every single one and says, “She’s beautiful,” when he means _You’re beautiful._

Mark looks stunned when Jack hands the phone back, like he didn’t think Jack would actually look at 200 photos of his dog. “She is. She’s awesome. We’re down at the harbour a lot. My parents have a boat there. You should come down from your roof and say hi to us.”

Jack wants to say _I will, I will come down from my roof, anything you want_. He actually says, “You take a lot of photos of her.” 

Mark nods like this makes perfect sense. “I take photography, but I can pretty much only take photos of things I really _like_ , you know? So, basically, Chica, and sometimes bands. And I can’t do my portfolio with photos of my dog.”

Jack says, “My friend Felix takes photography.”

“Felix, with the pebbles and all the black and white shots of leaves?”

“Yeah. I’m mostly just out of frame throwing those leaves into the air for him.”

Mark laughs. “I’m pretty much failing that class. I can’t find anything I want to take photos of, or anything that I’m good at taking photos of. Back home I’d take hundreds, you know, of shows on Fridays and Saturdays, but here-”

Jack feels slightly giddy on the sensation of having an actual conversation with Mark, with words and everything, actual responses to what Mark is saying. He doesn’t even realise that Mark has stopped speaking, has taken a step closer, cup clutched to his chest, his eyes flicking between Jack’s face to his hands, which are still tearing at the label. 

A blonde girl Jack vaguely recognises click-clacks in to the rhythm of stilettos on wooden flooring and plants her hand on Mark’s arm. She says, “ _Mark_ ”. Mark is still chattering away, oblivious. 

Jack stares at the possessive curl of her fingers around his bicep.

“It’s just hard,” Mark says, “to find bands here. I mean, ones that aren’t full of old guys playing folk covers.”

The blonde laughs prettily, like the chiming of bells, and Mark turns to face her, says, “ _Oh_ ”, in a tone that Jack can’t place. 

It’s the sudden loss of Mark’s gaze, the sun in shadow, the need of _No look back at me_ , that causes Jack (four beers in, a label in sticky pieces on his palm) to say, “I’m in a band.”

Mark blinks. “What?”

Jack, with sudden realisation, says, “What?”

“You are?”

“I am?”

Mark takes a step, shaking off the blonde’s hand ( _Ha!_ Jack thinks). “You’re in a band?”

Jack preens into the glow of Mark’s eyes without fully meaning to. “I am.”

“When’s your next show? Can I come? I mean, can I start- When can I start? Taking photos? Can I start taking photos? I haven’t even asked, can I -”

“Yes,” Jack says. To anything. Anything. 

Mark smiles. “So, you can tell me when I can start?”

“Yeah, I- I need- I should check a few things, make sure that everything is-”

“It’ll really just be photos of you, mainly. You’ll be sick of me by the end.”

Jack thinks _not possible_ , leaving a break in the conversation like he actually said it.

Mark says, “Thanks Jack, I was so sure I was gonna fail that class.” He reaches out, like he might pat Jack on the shoulder. Jack leans under the phantom weight of it, but the blonde girl intercepts Mark’s hand halfway and loops their fingers together.

\---

“I just,” Jack says, now crossing the line into drunk and loose tongued, lisping on words, “I just love him. That’s all.”

“Fuck,” Felix replies, as if he hasn’t spent the entire walk home dreamy-eyed and incapable of saying sentences that don’t include Marzia’s name. “No one said anything about _love_ here, Jack.” 

“I am now.”

“You _love_ him?” Felix guides Jack down the steps to his house. “Like, actual _love_ love?”

Jack says, “Yes,” and hiccups morosely. 

“You told him you’re in a band,” Felix continues, rummaging for his keys. “You’re not in a band.”

“No,” Jack agrees. “I’m not.”

“So, what are you gonna do now?”

“Start a band,” Jack hiccups again. “I guess.”

Felix stares at him. “Really? _That’s_ your next step here?” He finally opens the door. “Try and be quiet.”

This is, of course, an impossible task. Jack falls into Felix’s kitchen, takes out a whole collection of mugs, and yells, “Sorry!,” as if Felix is trying to hear him from another house, across the street. 

Felix sighs and shouts, “Förlåt!,” up the stairs, and sits next to where Jack has landed. “I said be quiet.”

“He’s made of colours and I’m made of colours,” Jack says.

“ _Everyone’s_ made of colours,” Felix replies, confused.

\---

Felix is polite enough to not bring up Jack’s lie until the next afternoon, giving Jack most of the morning to roll around on Felix’s bedroom floor and complain about how much his head hurts. Felix’s mother even brings him a whole pitcher of water (“Tack, Mrs. Kjellberg,” he says, which he’s fairly sure is thank you in Swedish. Hopefully. Felix wrinkles his nose, as always, at Jack’s pronunciation.)

“So,” Felix says, sitting on his bed, looking down at Jack on the floor. “You told Mark that you’re in a band so that you could spend time together.”

“I remember. How could I _not_ remember?”

“So, when are you gonna tell him that you’re not actually in a band?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Jack begins.

“Jack. Seriously. You don’t play any musical instruments.”

“I think I could be the singer.”

“Of course. Of course you do.”

“Do _you_ play any musical instruments?” Jack asks, hopefully, as though Felix might have a whole secret background in drumming. Or maybe playing bass. Or both. Both would be better.

“No,” says Felix. “And I thought that when you sobered up you’d see how stupid this idea is.”

Jack, honestly, had done just that, had woken up in the middle of the night with a mouth as dry as sandpaper and a horrible feeling of _why did you SAY that_. But it had all abruptly evaporated at the memory of Mark reaching out, of Mark’s eyes crinkling, of Mark saying _Come down from your roof_ , and _It’ll really just be photos of you, mainly_ , the sheer glow of Mark’s smile as he said _You’re in a band?_

“I can sing,” Jack says. “You’ve heard me sing.”

“Shouting along to Chop Suey is not _singing_ ,” Felix replies, but with no real heat behind it, using the gentle tone of someone who already knows what’s going to happen. “This is a stupid idea. When we talk about this in a month, remember that I said it was. Remember me saying that.”

Jack says, “A month?”

“That’s when the photography assignments are due. You should probably speed up getting that band together.”

\---

Mr. Avidan laughs. And laughs. He has the kind of hiccupy high pitched laugh that makes you laugh along, so Jack does, even if he knows that the joke’s on him. “Oh, Jack,” Mr. Avidan wipes a tear from under his eye. “Oh, Jack. That’s insanity. You can’t just start a band on a Monday and expect to be doing shows on a Saturday.”

“How hard can it be?”

Mr. Avidan, from his perch on the edge of his desk, has another laughing fit. Jack waits until he finally says, “What’s this about? Are you even into music? I’m the head of music and I’ve never seen you anywhere near any of my classes. If you weren’t in detention all the time we’d never see each other.”

Jack takes the conversation back to his original question and says, “But, like I said, do you know anyone? Who would be in a band with me?”

“What’s this about? Is it about a girl? You can tell me.”

“It’s not about a girl.”

Mr. Avidan knowingly says, “Oh. Okay. I know a few people. I’ll pass on the deets, under one condition.”

“Okay, what?”

Mr. Avidan holds his hands out, imploringly. “You play my end-of-year show in four weeks.”

Jack makes a noise that sounds like _Buh?_

“Please, Jack, it’s a shitshow every year. I just have Dan Howell and his piano, but only if he’s in the right mood to play. If I could have a band there it would be awesome and-”

“But-”

“And we’ve had such great detention times together, right?”

“I-”

“If you do it, then I’ll help you with whatever you need.”

Jack says, “Fine. And help me, _please_.”

Mr. Avidan leans back and says, “Dan Howell and his piano. That’s your first stop.”

\---

Jack is pretty sure that Dan Howell doesn’t like him much. They only have English together and sometimes, when Jack is speaking at his usual volume, he can see Dan’s hands curled into fists, knuckles turning white, like the mere sound of Jack’s voice is all too much. Though Dan looks like that most of the time, in general; he transferred from the private school across town very abruptly, in the middle of the year, and has a tendency to stare (wide-eyed and apprehensive) at the cracks in the school ceiling, at the fights that take place every lunch time, at the out-of-date textbooks, like he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here.

He gives Jack one of those looks when Jack finally finds him outside the music room. Jack says, “Dan!” 

Dan, softly and posh-voiced, says, “Jack?”

“You play the piano, right?”

Dan says, “Yes,” like he’s revealing a deep secret about himself. “Why?”

“I’m starting a band and I need someone to play the keyboard.” Jack plays an imaginary piano, fingers dancing through the air in front of him, to make his point. “You in?”

“A _band_?” Dan frowns so hard that his nose wrinkles up. “What type of band?”

“A band-band. You know.”

“I mean, what type of music are you going to play?”

“Oh.” Jack hesitates. “I don’t really know. I thought you could help with that. I’m not that musical.”

“But you’re starting a band?”

“There’s, uh, a reason for that. It’s a good reason, I swear.”

Dan considers this for a while, pulling the sleeves of his standard college sweater over his hands and blinking up at Jack. He has a dimple on his cheek that looks like a sad face. Jack wants to point this out, but doesn’t. He finally says, “Who else is in the band?”

“Well, there’s me.” Jack points to himself. “And now,” he points to Dan, “you.”

Dan is polite enough not to look too shocked. He says, “Two people?”

“For the moment, yeah.” Jack shifts awkwardly, foot to foot. “You in?”

“Are we singing original songs?”

“We could,” Jack says. “Have you written any?”

Dan flushes. “Some.”

\---

Dan’s songs are all very sad and full of metaphors about space and stars and the general insignificance of being a tiny speck amongst a billion specks with the chance that maybe there’s another speck, somewhere, which makes you feel not that insignificant after all. They’re full of _yearning_ , if Jack was to pick a word. He tries to tell Dan this but can only raise his eyebrows as if to say, _How did I sit right next to you in English and not know that you felt like this?_

“They’re about someone from my old school,” Dan finally says, watching Jack pour over each screen of notes on his phone. “That’s all.”

“We don’t have to perform them if they’re just for her.” Jack says, feeling almost possessive of the songs, of what they mean. The thought of singing them, when he could have written them himself, is suddenly terrifying, like he would be holding Dan’s heart (his own heart) up for everyone to see. 

“For him,” Dan says. “They’re just for him.”

“We don’t have to,” Jack repeats. “I’m not stealing songs that you wrote about someone else.”

“Why?” Dan says. “Have you got someone you want to write about?”

Jack dodges this question. “Does this person know that you write songs about him?”

“He knows I _write_ them. He’s never heard them. I wouldn’t play them. I always thought they would sound better with a band.”

“Mr. Avidan wants us to play the end-of-year show,” Jack says, carefully. “We could invite him. Your boy. We could sneak him in. He could hear them.”

Dan has another dimple, on his other cheek, that is deep and apparently only appears when he really smiles. It doesn’t look like a sad face. He says, “Okay,” and, “We could write some songs for you too. If you wanted.”

“I don’t have anything to write about.”

Dan says, “Hmmmm,” and, “Also, I always thought you were really loud and obnoxious, but maybe you’re not.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “I’m definitely one of those things, but thanks. I guess.”

\---

His mother, delicately running her hands over the steering wheel of the car while stopped at a red light halfway from home, says, “A band?”

“A band,” Jack agrees. 

She doesn’t say anything else until they finally pull up outside the house. She grabs at his sleeve when he’s about to undo his seatbelt. “I don’t know where you came from sometimes, Jack, I really don’t.” It’s said almost fondly, slightly mystified.

Jack, frozen, as if her hand has pressed a pause button, says, “Is that a good thing?”

She says, “It can be. Maybe this will suit you. I’ve always thought-”

“The band?” Jack, very gently, frees his sleeve. “It’s not- I don’t know how serious it’s going to be yet. We haven’t started.”

\---

Dan has a friend called PJ who goes to the super artsy school in Onchan and plays guitar. PJ knows a guy called Wade who goes to the not-so-artsy school in Castletown and plays drums. Wade doesn’t seem to know anyone and when Jack asked he ended up embroiled in a two hour conversation about the band’s _vision_ and emerged at the other end blinking and not sure exactly what day it was. “Oh,” PJ said afterward. “Yeah, he’s like that,” and then, “Dan, these songs are angsty as heck.”

Felix, upon seeing them all assembled in the music room, says, “I can’t believe this is an actual thing that is really happening. Do you even have a name yet?”

They don’t. They’re a keyboard player, a guitarist, a drummer and a singer. Dan, semi-ironically, had suggested, “The Band,” complete with air quotes, but that had been swiftly vetoed. Likewise to all of Mr. Avidan’s ridiculous ideas (“Steel Panther! Iron Leopard! Platinum Zebra! Titanium Llama!”).

“What do you even _sound_ like?” Mr. Avidan then asked.

They sound, in all honesty, like a big mess of someone trying to play classical piano over heavy metal drumming and folk guitar while someone else yells indistinguishable lyrics. 

“Fuck,” Felix says after an attempted run-through. “Was that a song?”

It wasn’t. Dan was playing Rachmaninoff (Jack says _Who?_ , a question that seems to pierce Dan in his very soul), PJ was freestyling and Wade, honestly, isn’t sure what he was doing. “I just zone out,” he says. “Sometimes. Sorry.”

\---

Mark says, “Hi,” and, “Can you pass me the red pen please?”

Jack hands it over. “Here you go.”

Mark says, “Thanks,” and then stays staring at him, then says, “I,” and, “We,” before finally, “We talked at Marzia’s party. You remember?”

He says it like there’s a genuine chance that Jack would have _forgotten_ , like Jack doesn’t remember every single letter of every single word that Mark had said, that Mark has ever said. “Yeah, sure. I remember.”

“It’s still okay? For me to photograph your band?”

Jack repeats, “Yeah, sure,” and watches Mark’s sunbeam smile spread over his face. “I mean, we’re not great. I don’t know if I told you that. We’re pretty terrible, actually.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” They both wait for Jack to say something. Jack does not. “Do you play original music or covers?”

Jack thinks of Dan Howell’s iPhone notes of endless sad cosmological love songs. “Covers, I guess. We have some original stuff but it’s, uh, private.”

“Secret?”

“In a way.”

“Are they about someone?” Is Mark leaning in? Jack isn’t sure but he seems to have, suddenly, completely taken up all the available desk space. “Your secret songs?”

“If I told you that then they wouldn’t be secret.”

Mr. Hurley says, “As interesting as this conversation is, Jack and Mark, I’d really like to start the lesson now.”

Mark leans back. Which confirms the leaning in. Jack instinctively leans back with him, then catches himself halfway through the motion and leaves it incomplete, like every unsaid sentence that never makes it into reality around Mark.

\---

Dan, in “practice” (if it can be called practice when it is, in fact, four people doing very different things at one time) says, “Maybe we could write songs together,” tentatively, like Jack was going to laugh at him.

Jack does not. He says, “You and me? Sure,” and watches both of Dan’s dimples furrow into his cheeks.

“Practice” had taken the place of detention, to a point. But Mr. Avidan was still pretty insistent on Jack at least being there for the last half hour. As he leaves, Dan hands him a blank moleskin and says, “Bring it tomorrow,” as if Jack was seriously going to go home, write lyrics, and then wander into practice tomorrow with them trailing behind him, like a flock of sheep. 

“What would I write about?” he asks, confused, holding the notebook in front of him.

Dan says, “Write about something that you love,” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

\---

Mark is at the harbour again. He holds Chica up in his arms, nestling her in the crook of his elbow, and waves one golden paw at Jack.

Jack, notebook on his knees, waves back.

“Come down!” Mark says. 

“I can’t.” Jack holds up the notebook. “I’m writing. Homework.”

Mark says, “Aw, c’mon. I’ll take you out on the boat.” Anyone else would be having this conversation through yelling, hands cupped around mouths. Not him and Mark, their voices already at the perfect amplitude. “You said that you liked to-”

“Watch them,” Jack interrupts. 

“What, like, only from a distance? You never want to experience one?”

Jack nods, suddenly feeling like they’re talking about something else completely.

“At least come and meet Chica. She’ll be offended if you don’t.”

Jack sighs and slides down the eaves, onto his mother’s ivy, then onto the arbour and to the floor. He says, “I sneak out a lot,” to Mark’s startled face and, then, “Hello beautiful girl!” to Chica. He drops to his knees and begins a whole song's worth of happy nonsense talk that she completely laps up, rolling on the floor so that he can scratch her exposed belly and bury his hands in her yellow fur.

Mark, when Jack looks up at him, looks stunned, then seems to blink himself back into real life. “Come out on the boat,” he says. 

“I can’t,” Jack tells him. 

“It won’t be far.”

“It won’t be far _enough_.”

“Sometimes,” Mark says, “I think I could sail all the way back to Ohio.”

“Isn’t Ohio completely landlocked?”

Mark laughs. “How do you know that?”

Jack has absolutely not spent some detention sessions looking up Ohio on a map and reading extensively about all Cincinnati has to offer, trying to imagine Mark there, eating Goetta and walking by the Tyler Davidson Fountain. “I don’t know. I just do.”

Mark stuffs his hands in the pouch of his hoodie and rocks back on his heels. “You don’t have to. I mean, you don’t have to come on the boat. You can go back to your tower.”

Jack says _It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I really really do want to. Maybe Too Much, but that’s kinda standard for me. If I go out on the boat with you I’ll never want to come back_.

Jack stands up, dusts off his jeans. “Maybe another time.”

He shakes Chica’s paw and goes to let himself back in the front door of the house. From Mark’s raised eyebrow he explains, “I can get _down_ , I just can’t get back up.”

By the time he gets back onto the roof, Mark and Chica are both gone.

\---

“Who’s this about?” Dan asks, at lunch, trying not to drop pieces of salad on the notebook pages. “Someone who lives on a boat? Or like, near a boat. I don’t really get this one line here-”

“It’s not about anyone. I just wrote it looking at the harbour.”

Dan says, “Hmmmm,” and, “You can’t say my songs are sad anymore. Not after this.”

“It’s not _sad_. And you told me to write about something I love.”

“You love someone who lives at the harbour?” Dan looks concerned, like he should phone Jack’s parents. “Do they live there permanently? Do they go to this school?”

Dan too, Jack has noticed, doesn’t fully obey the all grey dress code. But he does so more subtly than outright dying his hair the colour of a Sharpie. He wears small black earrings, has a black stripe on the bottom of his grey tie, and two of the fingernails on his right hand have been coloured in with black marker. When Jack doesn’t answer any of his questions he sighs, dramatically, and goes back to the notebook. 

“They don’t live there permanently,” Jack says. 

“I could write a melody for this,” Dan says. “On the piano. If you wanted to sing it. I mean, half of the words don’t rhyme and we might need to-”

“I don’t want to sing it. I wrote it because you told me to. We’re only going to sing covers, that’s all.”

Dan gives him the notebook back. “But in case you ever want to-”

“I _won’t_ ,” Jack says. Dan looks surprised. “I know I’m loud about most things but not this. This is mine.”

“Okay,” Dan says. “I get it. You know I get it. We don’t have to talk about it.” His voice betrays him slightly, indicates that he actually wouldn’t mind if Jack _did_ want to talk about it.

\---

Felix says, “Hey, I might have gotten you your first show.”

Jack frowns at him.

“My cousin Sigrid is getting married.” There are precisely three Swedish families on the island, all of whom refer to each other as cousins. Jack has no idea if they are actually related, but he tends to not question it. “Well, they’re getting married in Gothenburg, actually, but they want to have a party before they leave here, and she was trying to find a band for live music, and I said-”

“ _Felix_ ,” Jack hisses. “Please tell me you didn’t-”

“You have to play a show soon, Jack! Don’t you want Mark’s full attention?” Felix holds his hands up, fingers touching in a square that he twists like he’s trying to fit Jack into a frame. “It’s a Swedish wedding. Everyone will be drunk on neat vodka two hours in and no one will care.”

Jack says, “But we’re terrible. You’ve heard us.”

Felix continues to mime taking photos, clicking his tongue in a way that’s probably meant to be the flash. “I’ve already told her yes so this whole conversation is pointless.” 

“Then why are we having it?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to humour you, I guess.”

\---

“A wedding?” Dan says. “A _wedding_?” He can actually be pretty loud too, when he wants to be, his voice fills the entire practice room. “That’s an actual  life event.”

“I know,” Jack says. “That’s cool right? For our first show?”

“At someone’s _wedding_?” Dan repeats. 

“Their pre-wedding party,” Jack corrects. “So, we should probably decide on a wedding suitable list of covers. Like, ones that I can sing. That don’t have heavy bass lines, because we have no bass.”

“Ones that are really easy to play because we’ve literally been a band for four days?”

“Yeah!” Jack says. “Exactly like that.”

\---

Mark says, “Hi,” and, “Can you pass me the red pen please?”

Jack hands it over. “Here you go.”

Mark says, “Thanks,” and then stays staring at him.

“We have a show,” Jack says. “Saturday. At the community centre. It’s a wedding.”

Mark’s eyes crinkle. “Do I need to dress up then?”

“I guess. I mean, if you wanted to. Felix said they don’t have a photographer so they might want you to take photos for them, if you-”

“Nope,” Mark says. “I’m only there to take photos of you.”

Jack chokes on something, who knows what, either a gulp of air or the word _you_ trying to break out of his voice box, and has to swallow down whatever piece of honesty he was about to say.

\---

PJ, Dan and Jack argue over the setlist for a full two hours. Dan names a whole list, while PJ, patiently, says, “Dan, it’s a wedding. We can’t play Frank Ocean’s entire back catalogue at a wedding. We can’t play Death Grips either. Know your audience.”

Wade arrives, late, with a fully laminated list of thirteen perfect songs, in an order so carefully arranged that it could almost be a mixtape, complete with perfect transitions between each number.

“Wade,” PJ says. “How?”

Wade shrugs. 

They play the first five. It sounds good. Not amazing, but not awful. Jack works on his vocal control, Dan doesn’t break into classical interludes, PJ does a little folky head bob while playing his guitar and Jack, for a second, wonders why he never started a band before. He thinks _They’re going to love us_ even if love is a slight exaggeration. _They’re going to think we’re okay_ is maybe a more realistic expectation.

“Hey!” he says to PJ. “We sounded okay!”

Felix who, for some reason, has assigned himself as official Band Practice Watcher, says, “You actually did.”

\---

Mark comes to meet everyone at the venue on the morning of the show, where tensions are high because Wade isn’t wearing a suit, which caused a (far too long) argument about the correct dress code of a wedding band. Dan, looking like he’d robbed an entire All Saints store, was taking it all very personally.

(Jack’s suit is borrowed from his oldest brother and is several sizes too big, but it’s still a suit and that’s the important thing, even if Dan had wrinkled his nose.)

“Oh,” Mark says, right in the middle of Dan eulogising about ties. “I can come back.”

“No,” Jack says. “Guys, this is Mark. Mark, this is everyone.”

“Mark the photographer?” Dan instantly starts trying to smooth out his hair, then stops and gives Mark an appraising look. “Oh. I see.” He turns to raise his eyebrows at Jack.

Mark blinks. “You see what?”

Dan, swiftly, says, “I’m Dan, this is PJ and this is Wade. Wade, you see that Mark is wearing a suit, right?”

Mark says, “So, how long have you been a band?”

Jack says, “Six months.”

Dan says, “One month.”

PJ, confidently, says, “Oh, years.”

Wade, equally confident, says, “Four days.”

They probably should have had a conversation about this beyond Jack yelling _Mark’s coming you have to pretend we’ve been a band for a while please it’s really important_ over Dan saying _You could even have just worn a shirt with actual buttons, that would have been something_. PJ gives Jack an apologetic look.

Wade, trying to salvage the situation, says, “Six months,” very insistently.

“Oh,” Mark says, thoroughly confused. “That long huh?”

“Oh, _so_ long,” PJ replies. 

“The longest,” Dan attempts. “It feels like _forever_.”

\---

The wedding is very pretty, decorated in a thousand shades of blue, and also full of people who are very drunk. One or two people applaud when the band comes on stage, but mostly everyone is pretty transfixed by the ice sculpture (which is in the shape of a ski slope that you can use to take a vodka shot ). Most bands would be pretty unhappy to play to a crowd of backs, Jack supposes, but it’s not so bad. He says, “Hi, I’m Jack and we’re…. The Band. Your band. The band for this wedding. Awesome,” in what he thinks is a standard speaking voice, but a few people put their hands over their ears.

Felix (who, as much as he can be annoying, is a pretty decent friend) doesn’t get distracted by the ice sculpture, which, Jack knows from experience, is probably taking a lot of effort and willpower, and runs around the dance floor like it’s a mosh pit with precisely one person. 

Jack’s singing has improved. He hits a pretty decent estimation of the high note in _Faithfully_. Dan doesn’t look up from his keyboard. PJ, at some point, side-steps over and says, “No one’s watching.” Wade drums from start to finish, even in the moments between songs. 

Mark is watching, arms straining against the cool white of his dress shirt, smiling, taking photos, trying not to be dragged to the bar by a number of eager women. He gives a huge round of applause after every number, enough noise for forty wedding guests.

“People are watching,” Jack tells PJ.

“ _Mark_ is watching,” PJ replies. Then, “ _Oh_.”

Dan scurries off stage as soon as they’re done and Wade continues to drum, as Felix continues spinning and twirling around the dancefloor, so PJ and Jack end up taking solo bows, sweeping and deep, so low that Jack nearly trips over his own feet, to the sound of exactly one person clapping. Luckily that person is pretty loud.

“So,” PJ says as they cross to opposite sides of the stage. “This makes sense now.”

Jack says, “What makes sense now?”

“You don’t have to tell me.” PJ taps the side of his nose. “Just know that I know. And, also, I don’t think he took any photos of the rest of us.”

“It’s for his project.”

“Jack,” PJ says, long-suffering in the way that people who have known Jack for a few days usually are. “I’m trying to say that-”

There’s an abrupt cymbal smash from behind them as Wade apparently decides that enough is enough, drumming wise, and PJ jumps almost a full five centimetres off the ground. When he lands his sentence stays in the air, thankfully unfinished.

\---

One of the guests (a huge blond guy with a beard, only a hammer away from being a pretty amazing Thor look-a-like) stumbles over and says something that Jack has to ask him to repeat three times before he realises that he’s actually speaking Swedish.

“He has a bar,” Felix translates. “He wants you to play there.”

Jack says, “Based on that?”

Felix, loyally, says, “You weren’t that bad.”

Thor waits expectantly.

Jack says, “Fine, okay.” Thor still looks confused so he adds, “Ja.”

Thor says, “Ja!”, and then continues with a whole stream of borderline Elvish that Jack, with his very basic Swedish ( _Hello_ , _Thank you_ , _Yes_ , and all the curse words), doesn’t have a chance of understanding.

“He says thank you,” Felix translates, five minutes later. 

Jack finds Dan near the buffet table, eyeing the ice ski slope with some trepidation, pulling at the sleeves of his expensive suit jacket. “You wanna do a shot?” Jack asks, hopefully.

“Vodka makes me sad,” Dan replies. 

Jack takes a shot anyway.

“So,” Dan says. “You started the band just to spend time with Mark Fischbach.”

The vodka burns in Jack’s throat. Dan, fake casual, is rearranging all the glasses on the table in a neat stack. Jack says, “That’s not exactly true.”

“It’s not?”

“Well, it’s also not untrue.”

Dan rolls his eyes in the dramatic way that Jack has come to recognise over the past few days. Dan does a great eye roll, with his pupils going right up into his forehead and punctuated by a flick of his fringe. “You should have said. I knew there was another reason beyond you wanting to be in a band with me.” He sounds almost wistful and Jack has to blink away, again, the image of Dan’s pages and pages of songs. “I just didn’t want to push it because it was nicer to think that you genuinely just-”

“I _do_ want to be in a band with you,” Jack says.

Dan pours himself a shot.

Jack says, “But vodka makes you sad.”

“I’m _always_ sad.” Dan drinks and says, “So, you have a crush on Mark.”

“It’s not a crush. I love him.” Jack’s tone, even to his ears, sounds too honest. And actually, too clear, as it’s the first time he’s ever said it sober. Or at least semi-sober. He tries to laugh, to take the edge off it. “I mean, I-”

“I know what you mean.” Dan returns his empty glass to the top of the stack. “You should have said. We could have had a better backstory ready.”

“I didn’t think he’d actually show up,” Jack says.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Dan looks confused. “He literally spent the entire night-”

“Jack!” Mark says. He sounds as though he’s just over Jack’s shoulder, but he’s actually at the other side of the dance floor, making his way towards them. 

Jack says _Hi did you enjoy the show I know we weren’t great but you seemed to think that we were great how many photos of me did you take can I see them_.

Dan gives him a confused look, as the silence becomes solid in the air, and says, “Hi, Mark.”

Mark smiles and says, “Hi, Dan. You were great.”

Dan flushes at the compliment and says, “Well, we could be better. We’ll probably be better. Next time.”

“When is next time?”

Jack says _We’ve got another show this weekend at a bar please come PJ said you looked like you were only taking photos of me is that true please come I don’t care if only one person is watching if that one person is you_.

Mark waits, and then says, “Just let me know. Whenever it is. I’ll be there.”

Dan says, “Yeah, sure,” and then watches Mark amble away. He frowns at Jack. “You realise that you’re not actually speaking to him, right? When he speaks to you?”

“I only can sometimes.”

“But you talk to everyone.”

“My words don’t work with him.” Jack takes another shot, pours one for Dan, even if it does make him sad, even if Dan’s always sad. “It all just stays in my head and I think that I’ve said it when I haven’t.”

“Wow,” Dan says. “You really do love him.”

“I think that most people are actually able to speak to people they love though.”

Dan ponders this, drinks, and says, “Not really. I didn’t. Not for a while. I just wrote songs for him instead.”

Jack takes his second shot. “But you said that you never played him the songs.”

Dan says, “Well, that’s something we have in common then, right? Being surprisingly bad with using our words.” 

“But he knows now? Even without the songs?”

“You can be pretty loud without words sometimes,” Dan replies.

\---

“How goes the band, Jack?” Mr. Avidan rests his chin on his hands, expectantly. “How was the wedding?”

Jack, at the desk furthest from the door, is putting the finishing touches to his English Lit essay. There are surprisingly not many necessary amendments. Mr. Karim had handed it back with a startled, “This is really good, Jack. Really good,” and both he and Mr. Avidan had spent some time staring at it in complete awe. 

“It was fine,” he shrugs. “Not awful but not amazing either.”

“Any thoughts on the name?”

“We still don’t have one.” Jack continues reading Mr. Karim’s comments. One of them says _Are you writing poetry in your spare time? This section is quite lovely_. Jack has never had anything of his described as _quite lovely_ in his life. “We’ve got some time though.”

Mr. Avidan looks at the comment that he’s reading. “Have you? Been writing poetry?”

Jack shrugs.

“Or songs?”

“Dan’s the one who writes songs. I’ve only really written one.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Avidan says delicately, “the band is helping you tap into some hidden talent that you-”

“It’s just one essay,” Jack interrupts, but he still show it to his mother, twenty minutes later, in the Citroen, and she looks so happy that he honestly thinks he might wake up to find it stuck to their fridge, his name and age written underneath. 

He takes the university leaflets out onto the roof. Not for anything serious. Just to look.

\---

Thor’s bar is a sweaty, tiny place that practically vibrates with the noise of Jack’s voice as he says, “Hi, we’re The Band. For tonight. Your band for tonight. How drunk are you all? You seem drunk”. People actually listen. Dan, at one point, actually looks up and accidentally makes eye contact with the front row. They actually have a front row. Jack’s on-stage dance moves progress to a gentle one-two step and then, bravely, a spin (during which he nearly trips over the microphone wires). People clap along. Someone yells, “Your hair sucks!” and, “This is the worst cover of _Mr. Brightside_ I’ve ever heard!”

When they finish there’s actual applause, from multiple people, but it almost meant more when it was just Mark. Jack can’t see him, with the lights and the _people_ , as much as he looks. In terms of them being a band, it’s better than the last time. In terms of being Jack, in love with Mark, unable to see him and his bright red hair in a crowd of people with equally bright hair, it’s worse. 

PJ, curls sweating into ringlets, throws an equally sweaty arm around Jack’s shoulder and says, “Hey, that was great! Did you see-” he throws his hand out, as if to indicate _everything_. “That was so cool.”

Even Dan stays for the bows. Wade continues drumming, right up until the point in time that they have to start clearing his kit away (Jack has to grab his elbow and say, “Wade, it’s over. They liked us. We think,” and Wade blinks like he forgot they were even playing a show.)

Mark, at the bar afterwards, says, “Hey, that was great,” and touches his hand to Jack’s shoulder. The pad of his thumb actually grazes the underside of Jack’s jaw. Jack swallows, and Mark’s eyes track the movement. “It was really great.”

“It was surprisingly not awful,” Dan says and Jack jumps under Mark’s hand because he’d completely forgotten that Dan was even there. 

Jack says, “Where were you?” voice slightly hoarse from the singing. 

“At the back,” Mark says. “Stood on a box so I could see you better.”

“For the photos?”

Mark, hand still heavy on Jack’s shoulder, still heavy in Jack’s heart, blinks and says, odd tone to his voice, “Yeah, for the photos.”

Jack feels something, _something_ , flutter, like a hummingbird’s wing under his ribcage. He says _Are they all of me?_

“Are you staying?” Mark says, and there’s a hopeful note in his voice that Jack knows he isn’t imagining. It sounds like _Will you stay?_

He doesn’t stay. All of their stuff has to be rolled into Wade’s Ford Focus and PJ, suddenly, gets a calendar reminder about an exam tomorrow, so they spend the hour-long drive from one end of the island to the other with Dan testing him on political reform in 1800s England while Wade drives and Jack presses his forehead to the cool glass of the window and thinks _So I could see you better_.

\---

They have to write more poetry for English. Mr. Karim, smiling, hands Jack a paper with a solid A, written in thick blue ink with a circle around it, and Jack thinks there might be a mistake. But there’s not. It’s his. Mr. Karim has written _Back on track??_ , almost hopefully, underneath the grade.

Jack takes it to detention with him, keeps staring at it on the desk as Mr. Avidan says, “Bands are about belonging.” He’s outside, so that he can smoke, talking to Jack through an open window. It apparently still counts as detention even if it hasn’t felt like detention for at least three weeks now. “They’re about finding a home, with each other. With music.”

“It’s turning out to not be the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“You must be the only student ever whose grades improved when they joined a band.” Mr. Avidan blows smoke rings in the air and, unsurprisingly and wistfully, says, “I was in a band, back in the day. A few bands, actually.”

Jack looks at the artful mess of Mr. Avidan’s curls and says, “I kinda guessed that.”

After detention, Jack goes up to the hills with Felix. He throws some leaves around artistically, watching them twirl in the air. Felix says, “Hey, I want it to convey what it means to be us, living here, remember?”

Jack spins another leaf upwards. “I know.”

Felix tilts his head. “No more trampling stones angstily into the ground?”

Jack thinks about spinning, mid almost-trip, microphone wire twisted around his ankle, and seeing, in order: Felix, side of stage, smiling, looking oddly proud (an expression that Jack knows he’ll deny if questioned about); Dan, glancing up from his keyboard, catching Jack’s eye and for a split second, actually standing to his full height rather than hunching over the keys; PJ, laughing delightedly at the fact that people were clapping along, looking at Jack as if to say _Are you seeing this, this is good, right?_ ; Wade, doing whatever it is Wade does, if Wade even registers that anything else is happening once he starts drumming; and Mark, standing on a box so he could see Jack better. Who has _ever_ wanted to see Jack better?

“I’m feeling okay,” Jack says. “This place isn’t so bad. It’s quite pretty isn’t it, living on an island? With the sea?”

Felix smiles at him. “Good. Your angsty stage was getting irritating.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Jack replies, and throws an entire handful of leaves, pebbles, pine cones and petals into the air. They explode outwards, like a firework that Felix is completely unprepared for.

\---

He tells his parents that he’s read the leaflets, that he’s doing well in English again, that he’s enjoying the band, that maybe they could come to a show, sometime, and maybe, just maybe, he might think about uni. Everyone, both parents and all his siblings, fall over themselves in trying to hide their astonishment. His mother, giving him a bowl of apple pie to take upstairs, says, “It’s been good for you, hasn’t it? The music? We should have thought about it sooner, with how you are. It suits you,” and one sister says, “Oh Jackie, maybe you’ve found your place on stage,” and he thinks _maybe maybe maybe_.

“Is that apple pie?” Mark says, from next to him and below him. He and Chica are at the harbour. He waves up at Jack, again a massive motion, like he’s hailing him from another planet.

Jack says, “Yes. I’d share it but there’s not much left. And also it’s my favourite.”

Mark’s hair has been re-dyed bright crimson, the colour of cartoon hearts, with smudges at his temples. He says, “Come down?” in the same tone with which he’d said _Are you staying?_

Jack leaves the half-empty bowl on his windowsill and does so. When he lands on the ground he asks, “You’re taking the boat out?” before dropping down to Chica’s level and pulling gently on the silk of her ears.

“No. Actually, can I tell you something?”

Jack says, “Sure.”

“The truth is I’m scared to sail it,” Mark says.

Jack looks up from Chica’s adoring face. “Why?”

“In case I don’t stop.”

Jack says, “I used to think that as well, but-”

“But?”

“Now I think that I’d come back. I think I would stay.” When Mark looks down at him, he says, “I mean, things seem different. Recently.”

Mark suddenly, like he was psyching himself up to do it, says, “I’m glad that you’re talking to me.”

Jack says, “I talk to you,” but has to say it to Chica, rather than Mark, because it’s not entirely true. 

“ _Sometimes_.” When they finally make eye contact again Mark says, “Sometimes you look at me like you _are_ saying something, but I can’t hear it.”

“How could you not? I’m the loudest person ever.”

“You’re not with me,” Mark points out. 

Jack resumes petting Chica. He says, “I’m sorry. That I don’t always talk to you.”

Mark makes an exasperated noise and then shrugs in defeat. “It’s been fun, watching your band. You’re pretty good.”

“Even the first time?”

“You’ve been getting better. I can hear that you’re getting better.”

Jack says, “Thanks,” softly. “And thanks for taking the photos.”

“Don’t thank me. I like taking photos of you. Of the band.”

Jack stands. “You’ll have to show me some. Soon. I mean, I know Dan wants to select the best ones of him, so-”

“I don’t have that many photos of Dan,” Mark says, voice heavy with some sort of meaning. “I mean, compared to- You know, other things. You can see them. Whenever you want.”

“Okay. I will.” Jack gestures apologetically back to the house. “I should-”

“Aw,” Mark says, pushing out his bottom lip. “Stay a little longer.”

Jack says, “How much longer?” and is amazed that it’s out loud. Mark looks surprised but happily so, like he’s been given an unexpected gift. “It’s just- I’m sort of grounded. Technically.”

“We’re right outside your house so I’m going to say it doesn’t count. Technically.”

“ _You_ can tell my mother that,” Jack says, but with a silent apology to his mother, who hasn’t been all that strict of late. 

“What are you thinking about when you’re up there?” Mark asks. “On your roof? I always feel like I’m interrupting you.”

“About what it would be like to get off this island,” Jack says. “About how long, theoretically, it would take to cross the Atlantic in one of these boats. How long it would take to get to London.”

Mark says, “You can do any of those things. You can go to any of those places,” followed by, “Is it so bad here, really?”

Is it? Jack wonders, has been wondering that more often recently. Is it really so bad? “You’re the one who wants to sail back to Ohio.”

“And _you’re_ the one who reminded me that it’s landlocked.” 

“But you’re scared to sail your boat.”

“I shouldn’t have said scared, I’m not _scared_ exactly, but I built it up a lot, in my head, where I would go, who I’d go with, how long it would take to get there, and now- I think it’s easy, to convince yourself that you’d be happier somewhere else when you could be happy where you are.”

“You mean you could be happy here?”

Mark smiles. “Yes.”

Jack remembers the four month point, the brown shoes detention, the great “disruption of class” when he had been sent out, when Mark had grabbed at his elbow and said _I know. I know how you feel_ and Jack had wondered how a person like Mark, who radiates goodness and positivity from every glowing pore, could possibly understand how a person like Jack, always thinking that things could be better, _should_ be better, that _he_ could be better, would feel.

Jack says, “Hey, do you remember when Mr. Hurley sent me out of class?”

“I remember,” Mark says. “And I remember everything you said.”

Jack thinks _Just on that day or all the other days too?_ He says, “You said that you know how I feel.”

“I did,” Mark looks at him, like Jack is something he never wants to look away from. “I _do_. Or I think I do.”

There’s a loud bang on the glass behind them, the glass of Jack’s living room door. He turns to see his mother, who doesn’t look angry but still holds her arm up and taps at an imaginary watch on her wrist. 

Jack says, “I think that’s my cue to leave,” reluctantly, and leans down to pat Chica’s head. 

His mother is eyeing Mark with obvious interest. Mark waves to her, a very small motion for him, and says, “Sorry I kept you out late.”

“I really didn’t mind at all,” Jack says.

\---

(The list of things that Jack has said to Mark Fischbach is now pages and pages of things that Jack can’t keep up with, an index with footnotes and dates. Entire sentences, actual opinions and spoken feelings. Feelings that are a whisper, an inhale, away from being the actual _real_ feelings that have sat, unsaid, in his heart for the best part of nine months.)

\---

Thor puts in a word with a friend and by Friday they’re playing another bar towards the top of the island. They roll all of their instruments in and out of Wade’s Ford Focus, then stand around and watch Wade set up his drums because he doesn’t trust anyone else to help. They’re the opening act for another band, an actual well-rehearsed and put-together band with their own colour scheme, who look completely and utterly bemused by them.

Felix helps Jack re-dye his hair in the bathroom before they go on stage and quiffs it up into a swirl of lime green sorbet. He says, “Hey, this colour really brings out how blue your eyes are,” and then swiftly follows that with, “bro”, just in case Jack might mistake it for the genuine compliment that it was.

(Felix is there with Marzia, who is currently chatting to Wade (and it’s the most animated that Jack has ever seen Wade, honestly). Felix is carrying her bag, coat, and glass of wine.)

“This is going okay, isn’t it?” he says, shifting Marzia’s powder pink coat from one arm to the other. “This band thing?”

Jack says, honestly, “I love it.”

Even if the show isn’t _that_ great, given that everyone is there to see the other band, the cooler band, the one that isn’t full of college students; even if his voice cracks more than once; even if Dan hits a few wrong notes; even if PJ does misjudge the size of the stage and nearly wanders right off; Jack still loves it, he still does, and there’s one tiny group near the front of the stage that actually seem pretty into them, so it’s all fine.

“Come tomorrow,” Thor’s friend says to them after the show. He looks even more Thor-like than Thor. Maybe he’s the ultimate version. “I’ve got a free timeslot, tomorrow, and you were pretty okay.”

“That’s a band name right there,” PJ says later, while they’re getting drinks. “Jack and the Pretty Okays.”

Wade says, “That actually means we’d always be either living up to people’s expectations or surpassing them. I like the irony of it.”

PJ, startled, says, “Thanks, Wade.”

Jack has nothing to add because he’s too conscious of Mark, sitting to his left, with the whole line of his arm pressing insistently against Jack’s. When they’d gotten to the table that Marzia had saved, Mark had said, “Hey, it’s greener,” and reached up, almost in slow motion, as if he was going to touch Jack’s hair, like his hand was moving through the cobwebs of a moment that Jack was already trying to commit to memory. His movement was so slow that it was easily intercepted by PJ, not realising what had been happening, who pressed a bottle of beer right into Mark’s palm. 

“You’re better than pretty okay,” Mark says, like it should be to the entire group, but it’s not, as he’s looking directly at Jack. 

From anyone else it would be for Jack’s ears only, but of course, this is Mark, so everyone hears it. PJ says, “Hey, thanks man!”, but to Jack it feels like it was whispered right into his ear, he shivers like it was, like he can _feel_ it.

\---

Jack gets a ride home with Felix and Marzia (once they’ve identified how difficult it is to put Wade’s drumkit back _into_ the Focus) and he waits until Marzia is just about asleep before he says, “Felix! Did you hear what Mark said?”

Marzia wakes straight back up. “What?”

“The whole bar heard what he said,” Felix replies. “What about it?”

“What did it mean?”

Marzia laughs, not unkindly, and leans over from the backseat to say, “Jack, he likes you. How are you not seeing this?”

“He’s followed you around this entire island to take photos of you,” Felix adds. 

Jack shakes his head. “For his project. For _college_.”

“Why _wouldn’t_ he like you?” Felix says. “Why is that such a hard thing to imagine? 

“He’s a brighter _colour,_ ” Jack says. “I mean, he’s brighter than me, he’s better than me, he’s-”

“Stop this right now.” Felix interrupts. “Why wouldn’t he like you? He tries to speak to you every day. He comes to the harbour and asks you to _come down from your roof_ so that he can talk to you. You’re the loudest person in existence, and so is he, but he makes you quieter. You two compliment each other.”

Marzia smiles at him, sweetly, and pats his shoulder. “Jack, you’re just as bright as he is.”

\---

The next night, while they’re setting up for the second show, Dan suddenly says, “I want you to sing my song.”

Jack says, “What?” because they haven’t changed the setlist, not once. It’s still the same one from the wedding.

“My song about Phil.”

Jack says, “Who’s _Phil_?” stupidly, and then, “Oh, the guy from your old school? Why, is he here?” When Dan flushes he repeats, “Fuck, is he _here_? Tonight? Is he? You should sing it, Dan, _you_ should-”

“I can’t sing,” Dan says, which is a lie. Jack hears him sometimes, high and clear, giving unexpected backing vocals. He always stops when Jack does, like he doesn’t want anyone to hear his voice on its own. “And I couldn’t. Not my song.”

“I don’t know the lyrics,” Jack says.

But three hours later he’s saying, “Hi, I’m Jack and we’re The Pretty Okays,” to which someone in the audience yells, “Your name sucks,” and Wade, out of nowhere, yells, “It’s _ironic_ ,” and then they begin.

And fifteen minutes in he has three crumpled notebook pages in his hands and he’s saying, “Uh, if your name’s Phil then this is a song about you. We haven’t rehearsed it, so I’m sorry. And that’s a terrible thing to say just before someone sings a song about you. Sorry.” And it’s not great, as he’s trying to match his voice to a melody that Dan has obviously pre-planned, while attempting to read Dan’s godawful handwriting, but there’s a few points where it actually sounds pretty, and when they’re done Dan smiles at him, so huge that Jack thinks his dimples might be permanently etched into his cheeks, so he’ll count that as a win. He says, “For Phil. Wherever you are out there.”

\---

Mark, afterwards, is quiet, gnawing on his thumb nail, and not saying much, which Jack knows by now is unusual. It’s just the two of them, as Wade and PJ are packing the car back up, and a guy with bright blue eyes and an even brighter blue shirt had bounced backstage and whisked Dan away almost immediately. “I’m Phil!” he’d managed, in the midst of doing so, had waved to Jack even though Jack was only half a step away from him. “Thanks for singing my song.”

“You don’t normally do originals,” Mark says, finally. “Why tonight?”

“Because he was here, and that’s good timing, I guess.”

Mark looks pained. “If he’s here then why are you sat here with me?”

Jack says _Because who else would I ever want to sit with?_

Jack, confused, says, “If _Phil’s_ here? I don’t really-”

“Nevermind,” Mark says, and stands. “I can help you load up the car.”

Mark carries a snare drum under each arm and helps Wade arrange the equipment in the boot, like an elaborate game of Tetris. Jack sits in the backseat, looking out, trying to get himself caught in Mark’s gaze, but Mark won’t look up. 

“It was good,” PJ says, squashed into the seat beside him. “Tonight. And with Dan’s song. Should we have said it was Dan’s song?”

Jack blinks. “I didn’t say that it was?”

“I mean, I know he hates the attention but-” PJ shrugs. “Maybe next time.”

“Next time,” Jack says. “I’ll do a huge intro about him. He’ll hate it.”

PJ smiles and pulls on one of his perfect ringlets. “When does it stop? This band thing?”

Jack shrugs non-committedly. “I don’t-”

“Does it have to stop? After the end of year show thing? After the photos are done? Do we have to stop?”

Jack wonders how many people on this island are looking for _something_ , an outlet, an escape, and are fastening their fist around it as soon as it gets within reach. 

“We’re going to the same uni, all of us, aren’t we?” PJ asks, hopefully. 

“It’s the _only_ uni,” Jack says. “And, yeah, I’m going there. Probably.”

PJ says, “It’s just- I’m liking it, we’re all liking it, I don’t-”

He turns back, to look out the window, to look at Mark, to have Mark look at him, but Mark is gone. There’s just Wade, chatting animatedly with Ultimate-Thor, tapping away at an imaginary drum kit.

“It doesn’t have to stop,” Jack tells PJ, firmly. “We don’t have to stop.”

\---

He’s at home, just about ready for bed, when he hears the distinct rattle of stones hitting his windowsill. He leans out, hoping for exactly what he ends up seeing.

Mark, on the harbour, says, “Come down.”

Jack, on the roof, says, “What, now?”

“Jump.” Mark holds out his arms. “I’ll catch you.”

Mark holds out his arms like he’s the prince and Jack is Rapunzel, ready to swoon right out of his bedroom window.

“I’ll catch you,” Mark repeats. 

Jack says, “You don’t have to catch me,” and makes his inelegant way down the eaves, onto his mother’s ivy, onto the arbour, onto the floor. When he lands he says, “Are you okay?”

“Me?” Mark smiles, but it’s a fake version of the sun, artificial and underwhelming when you’re used to the real thing. “I’m fine. Why?”

“It’s late. You’re not usually here this late. No one is. And you were quiet, at the show.”

“I can be quiet. Just like you.”

Jack shivers, in his plaid pyjamas and Shadow of the Colossus t-shirt, and wraps his arms around himself. “I just- You seemed sad, is all. Don’t be sad.”

Mark says, “Do you ever think,” and stops.

“Do _I_ ever think? About what? I think about lots of things.”

Mark, abruptly, says, “Who’s Phil?”

“Phil? Someone Dan wrote a song about.” Mark sighs, like he’s been holding the sound for hours. “Someone who was at the show, from his old school. I didn’t really-”

“Come on the boat,” Mark says. “We don’t have to go anywhere. I never _do_ go anywhere. Just, please. I want to sit with you.”

Jack says, “Okay.”

\---

The boat is small, has a tiny deck with room for two people, and then a little cabin with a bed, some cupboards and a stove. The bed is unmade, obviously recently slept in. There are coffee stained mugs in the little sink, photography magazines on some of the surfaces.

Jack says, “Do you sleep in-”, but lets the question die on his lips as Mark looks at the ground, embarrassed. 

“The show tonight was good.”

“Was it?” Jack tries to think. It was a blur, and everything feels blurred right now, with Mark, far too big for such a tiny space, right in front of him, the broadness of his shoulders almost touching the cupboards on either side. The urge to touch is too much. “My dancing is terrible.” He does his tiny one-two shuffle, which succeeds only in bringing him closer to Mark. “I need to work on it.”

“I don’t think you need to change anything,” Mark says. “I’m glad we’re talking.”

Jack stops shuffling. “What?”

“It’s weird that we’re only talking now, with, uh, the band, and everything.”

Jack repeats, “What?”

“We’ve sat next to each other for nine months.”

Jack knows this. He could count it down to the days, the _minutes_. Mark is taking up precisely 90% of his space, 100% of his vision. He says, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Why didn’t you want to come on the boat before?”

Jack says, “Scared, I guess.”

“You were scared,” Mark says. He points to himself, lightly knocks his thumb against his chest. “Of me? Really?”

“Not _scared_ exactly, but just-”

“You would never talk to me. I tried all the time but-”

“Why did you dye your hair?” Jack asks, suddenly needing to know the answer to that question, to know if the answer is what he wants it to be. 

Mark says, “To impress you. Obviously. It couldn’t have been more obvious.”

“It wasn’t obvious _enough_.”

Mark sighs, half shakes his head. “Because you were scared,” he repeats. “Of me.”

“I’m scared of everything,” Jack replies and holds his hands up, in a _What can you do?_ sort of shrug. “Everything that means something, anyway.”

Mark blinks, his eyebrows raising hopefully. “Everything that means something?”

“I’m-” Jack stops. “Sometimes I’m-”

Mark waits.

“I’m too much,” Jack finally says. “For a lot of people. For most people. Too Much in all capitals. People eventually just want me to quiet down, I guess.”

“You’re not too much for me,” Mark says. 

Jack says, “You don’t know that.”

“I’ve got a good estimation.”

Jack inhales, the sound of it shakes and reverbs in the tiny cabin space. He shakes his head. “Literally _no one_ has ever said that to me.”

“I just said it.” Mark frowns. “Is that what you’re scared of? People wanting you to stop being you? Because-”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Because I wouldn’t want that. You’re _you_. I like that you’re loud. I like that you get really passionate about stuff, even if it does get you in detention all the time. I love that you dyed your hair the brightest green that was humanly possible. I love that you spend your evenings sitting on a roof and looking at boats. I like _you_.”

Jack is almost breathless. He says, “Why?”

“ _Why_?” Mark looks mystified. “How can you not-”

“You’re the nicest person I know. You’re like the sun, you’re the brightest- You’re just the- I have an entire list, I know every single thing that-” Jack stops. “This isn’t making sense. That’s why I can’t talk to you. You stop my words from working.”

Mark says, “I’ll talk instead. I lied. Before. That wasn’t the first time I saw you at the harbour. I saw you all the time, on your roof, looking out, and I just wanted to know you, why you were hiding out there, what you were thinking about. But you would never talk to me. I tried all the time. You used to stare at me like you _were_ saying something and I would always think that you had but I’d missed it somehow. I don’t even write with that red pen. Don’t you ever notice that? I haven’t been supposed to sit next to you for months, but I ignore the seating plan every day. I found other bands, but I only want to take photos of you. I never even listen to the music when I could look at you.”

Jack’s mouth is hanging open, he can feel it. His heart, fluttering somewhere between _This can’t be happening_ and _It is, it’s actually happening_ , finally makes it into his throat and he says, “You _like_ me?”

Mark nods, very seriously. “I like you.”

Jack laughs, and then laughs again because he’s surprised the sound came from his own mouth, like an automatic reaction to Mark that he has no control over. “You like me.”

Mark grabs Jack’s upturned hands, fingers around his wrists. “I like you.” 

Jack takes a half-step forward. “You’re the brightest colour I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re not too much, you never could be.”

Jack says, “I like you too.”

Mark brushes their noses together, sighs, and kisses him. Kisses him exactly like Jack always knew he would: hot and focused and _loud_ , noises that Jack wants to catch and store, gasps and breaths that he wants to throw in the air for Felix to take a photo of, in black and white. They could call it _I made Mark Fischbach make those sounds_. 

He kisses Mark’s cheek, Mark’s jaw, his chin, his forehead, both red stained temples. Mark hums. When he touches his lips to the outside of Mark’s ear (left, just on the curve), Mark’s breath hitches, and his fingers flex around Jack’s wrists. Jack drops his hands and pushes them up, up under the hem of Mark’s shirt. 

Mark looks like someone has drawn him, with the solid lines of his muscles. Jack presses his hand to the centre of Mark’s chest, which is heaving under his touch like he, somehow, has stolen the air from Mark’s lungs. Jack is about to say something incredibly eloquent, like _Wow_ , or _Fuck, look at you_ , but Mark says both of those things first. 

Jack is pretty sure his hair is standing vertical from his head and that he still has post-show sweat running down his face, t-shirt sticking to his skin, and so he clicks his tongue disbelievingly. He curls one hand around Mark’s hip, leans forward to press his face into the curve of Mark’s neck, and puts his mouth under his ear.

Mark makes a hitched breath (loud, of course loud), says a word that could be _Jack_ , and Jack never wants anyone else to ever say his name again. Then he says another word that could be _Please_ , possibly, maybe. 

Jack says, “What, what do you want?”, breath hot on Mark’s skin. 

“This,” Mark says. “Always.”

“Seriously, just this?”

Mark says, “We should,” followed, instantly by, “No, come here,” followed by, “No, come with me,” as they both topple onto the tiny bed.

\---

Jack has to extract himself from Mark, who is both too big for the bed and too big for whatever is going on in Jack’s heart right now (if he was a cartoon character it would be beating right out of his chest, reflecting in his eyes). Mark makes a dissatisfied sound and grabs at Jack’s shirt.

“I can’t,” Jack says, to a question that wasn’t asked. “I’m still technically grounded. And my mother does rounds of everyone before she goes to bed.”

“Rounds? Do you live in a dorm?”

“Lots of brothers and sisters.” Jack lets Mark tug him back a little anyway. “Look, Mark, I -”

“I like you,” Mark says. “A lot. If that wasn’t immediately obvious.”

“It wasn’t. And I like you, a lot. If that wasn’t immediately obvious.”

“It absolutely wasn’t.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “Well, I’m sorry about that.”

“I thought that you’d written a song about Phil. I didn’t take any photos that whole show. I just stood there like, thinking _Who is this Phil_ , and just _hating_ him because I’m the one who’s spent nine months just waiting for you to say hi to me every Tuesday and Thursday, and then always having to be the one to say it first.”

Jack says, “ _Oh_ ,” because that suddenly makes sense. “No, I wrote a song about _you_. And I said hi first once.”

Mark pulls again at Jack’s shirt. “Really, when?”

Jack knows the time, the day, and the month; it’s just hard to gather his thoughts at present. “Like three months ago.”

“I would have remembered.”

Jack allows himself to be pulled back, for a second, and then maybe another few seconds, before he says, regretfully, “I have to go. I really do.”

Mark walks him off the boat, even though it’s exactly fifty steps from there to Jack’s front door, and kisses him, very chastely, on the cheek, right under his eye. “I’ll see you,” Mark says, with a slight uplift on the end. _I’ll see you?_

“Yes,” Jack says. “Whenever you want.”

He’s too loud going back into the house, as always, letting the door slam, dropping his keys and trying to mutter under his breath at said dropping of keys, but muttering under his breath has never been his strong point. He’s rather firmly in his parents’ good books at the moment though, so his father just lightly cuffs him at the top of his ice cream scoop hair and says, “Secret life of a rockstar, eh, Jackie?”

His dad hasn’t called him Sean for a long time. This is a good thing. Jack is a nickname of fondness, of pride. He says, “You know it, Pa,” and side-steps all the way upstairs.

\---

Felix says, “Fuck off,” hands clasped to his chest, like Jack has just asked him to prom and he doesn’t know what to say. “Are you serious? After all this time?”

They’re picking “the prettiest leaves in Glen Maye,” even if none of them so far are living up to Felix’s very high leaf expectations. Jack finds a nice, six sided, completely intact one and says, “I’m serious.”

“After all of this ridiculous two-sided pining and passing pens and speaking in your head and shit?” Felix readies his camera as Jack throws the perfect leaf into the air, underside catching the sun. 

“After all that,” Jack agrees. 

“You actually noticed,” Felix says. “After nine months you finally noticed.”

Jack catches the leaf in his palm and says, “You act like it should have been the most obvious thing in the world to me.”

“Maybe not to _you_ ,” Felix says. “But you don’t always have the highest opinion of yourself. When you should.”

Jack says, “That’s a really-”

Felix huffs and gestures for Jack to throw the leaf again. Jack does. 

“PJ said you’re going to University College.” Felix takes the photo, gives it an approving glance. 

“I think so.”

“You know how I said we’d look back in a month and I’d tell you the band thing was a bad idea?”

“Yup.”

“I’m not gonna. It turned out to be a pretty good idea.” Felix gestures for him to throw the leaf again. “And, hey, uni here isn’t so bad. Not with all your friends and your _boyfriend_ , and-”

“Not all my friends,” Jack says, spinning the leaf, on its tiny stem, between his fingers. “You’re not going there, you’re-”

“I am,” Felix looks mock incredulous. “Didn’t I tell you? I mean, there’s no point in going somewhere else, where no one appreciates me, and-”

Jack half-hugs, half-tackles him to the ground. Felix shrieks, like a banshee, because his hair is probably instantly ruined, but he throws an arm around Jack’s shoulders, briefly. They’re not huggy friends, not overly affectionate, never have been (not since the time when Jack’s mother, in nursery school, looked at Felix, all blond curls, and said, _What a pretty little girl_ ) so it doesn’t last very long, but Jack says, “I’m glad. I’m glad you are.”

Felix shrugs, “Whatever,” but he’s smiling, his eyes are a tiny bit wet. He says, “Hey, you broke the perfect leaf.”

Jack sniffs and says, “I’ll find you all the perfect leaves you want. Bro.”

\---

Jack says, “Hi.”

Mark says, “Hi,” and, “Can you pass me the red pen please?”

Jack says, “Get it yourself.”

Mark says, “I don’t need it anyway,” and smiles. The pages of his notebook are, Jack finally notices, covered in blue ink. He leans over and wraps his index finger and thumb around Jack’s wrist. “Hi.”

“We already said hi. And I said it first.”

“You did,” Mark says. “I noticed.”

Mr. Hurley says, “Jack and Mark! Please. Inside voices. Just once. For me.”

\---

Thor’s friend wants them back, wants them to do one Saturday a month. Thor himself, the original Thor, wants to book some Fridays. They’re very briefly in Sigrid’s wedding video and get two more calls, through Felix, for other weddings. Someone in college asks Wade if they’ll play a graduation party. The president of the University College Union emails, already asking about the possibility of shows there, in term time. Everyone offers to pay.

PJ scrolls through all the messages and says, “Wow. Oh my God. How? What do we say?”

They’re all in Mr. Avidan’s classroom, in what they’ve ceased to even pretend is detention (not that it ever felt like detention in the first place), having their photo taken for the end-of-year show poster. It’s an epic task plagued by the fact that they haven’t all successfully had their eyes open in the same photo, after twenty attempts, and keep having to take breaks for Dan to tidy his hair.

(Mark eventually manages one where they’re all open-eyed, but looking in different directions, and also like they’re from four different bands. Jack is the only one looking at the camera. “But he’s biased!” PJ says. “And he isn’t looking at the camera, he’s looking at _Mark_ ”. Which is fair.)

Dan looks at Jack. “What should we say? To the emails?”

Jack says, “We should see how a show without the wedding playlist goes first. Then maybe.”

\---

“I want to play the song,” Jack tells Dan. “  
song.”

Dan says, “The one about Mark? Oh, sorry, I mean the one about _the boy from the harbour_.”

“No, it’s about Mark.”

(“Tell me more,” Mark said one evening, back in his tiny cabin. Why did a person as big, as loud as Mark pick such a small room to spend his time in? Jack doesn’t know, but he sort of likes the way Mark fills the entire space, has to curl himself around Jack so they’ll both fit. “Tell me more about this song you’ve written about me.”

“I can’t just _tell_ you,” Jack said. “You’ll have to hear it. Properly.”)

Dan rolls his eyes and deepens his dimples at the same time. “Well, _obviously_.”

“We should play yours too. The one about Phil. But you should sing it.”

Dan says, “I don’t know if-”

“I’m literally going to introduce it and then leave you to it, so consider that your warning.”

(“It’s the first of many,” he told Mark. “The first of a whole album, an entire discography of songs about you. So, just, prepare yourself for that. I want to do a whole tour of songs about you, shows about you.” His voice is an actual whisper, a thing he didn’t think his voice could do, words tripping onto the shell of Mark’s ear. “There’s nothing else I could write about.”)

Dan says, “Maybe I could come up with one melody for both? I don’t know if I’ll have time to do two completely unique ones, and we could do one at the start and one at the end? Like bookends. I mean, they’re similar, they’re both songs about-”

(Mark shivered. He always did, when Jack was learning, when Jack went anywhere near his ears. He said, “That seems unfair, I can’t do anything in return. I can’t write songs about you.”

“You don’t need to,” Jack murmured. “You’ve already changed everything.”

“ _Everything?_ ” Mark blinked. “How?”

“By wanting to sit next to me in the first place.”)

“They’re both songs about people we love,” Dan finishes.

\---

They do the songs like bookends, just him, Dan and the keyboard. The tune Dan comes up with is very pretty, like it could be the theme from an anime, and Jack thinks it’s almost too pretty for his voice, for the sheer volume of it, but Dan just says, “I’ll play louder,” and shrugs.

It starts off not that good, and they have to bribe Wade to actually stop drumming for two minutes and ten seconds, but at some point during Phil’s song it comes together, him and Dan, as a pairing, and when they finish PJ says, “Hey, you two could just be a duo, you don’t even need us,” which is completely untrue, but the compliment is worth it, just for the blush across Dan’s cheekbones.

Jack says, “Hey, we should do a group hug,” and so they do, crushing bony elbows into each other’s chests. Jack says, “Thank you for being in this band with me just so I could talk to Mark. Even if I wasn’t that honest about it.”

“That’s okay,” Wade says. “It was obvious.”

\---

“Hey,” Mark says, bumping their shoulders together. “It’s the big show.”

They’re outside the school (standing right underneath the poster with their photo), Mark with his camera and Jack, uselessly, holding his notebook.

Mark says, “It’s nearly over.”

“Not really. You can take photos of me whenever you want.”

Mark smiles. “I suppose. It was lucky that you were in a band in the first place, really, otherwise we would have just-”

“I started the band four weeks ago,” Jack says. “This is only the fifth show we’ve ever played. I only started it because you wanted to take photos of a band and I wanted to be around you all the time and to talk to you in real life and not just in my head.”

Mark blinks, smiles, like this is endearing and not weird. “Oh, okay.”

“I wish I could say it’s the most dramatic thing I’ve ever done, but it’s not.”

Mark shrugs. “I had about twenty bands contact me for photos. I just only ever wanted to take photos of you. If you hadn’t been in a band I would have asked if I could tag along to Felix’s pebble photos. I guess that’s kinda dramatic too, right?” 

Jack thinks _Or asking for a red pen that you never wrote with twice a week for nine months just so I’d speak to you, that’s dramatic_ but he can’t say that aloud yet. That realisation is just for him to keep, somewhere secret, with the echo of Mark’s voice saying _You’re not too much for me_.

\---

Jack runs laps of the entire backstage, high-fiving everyone, right down to the group of year sevens with their recorders. He loops back around to Mark three separate times before Mark finally catches hold of him and says, “Are you usually this hyper before a show?”

Jack had thought that everything was grey, that he was an unwanted splash of colour somewhere, a blot on a neat watercolour that couldn’t be cleaned up. But there are other colours now, he sees that. 

If Mark is the most luminous red imaginable, then PJ is probably yellow, a deep and soft lemon, comforting; Wade is purple, the unique type of shade you can only get by mixing everything else together; Dan is black, but the kind of clear black that reflects everything. 

“Are you _drunk_?” Dan says after Jack’s told them all this. He’s smiling though. “What colour are you?”

“Green,” Jack says. “Bright and dramatic and visible from the back row. The loudest a colour can be.”

They’re side of stage, waiting to go on. The year ten kid that Mr. Avidan found to replace Dan is playing classical piano, not that well if Dan’s flinching is anything to go by. Wade is air drumming, sticks flying. PJ is peering out at the audience. Dan says, “Of course, of course you are.”

The piano player finishes, on a completely flat note and to some polite applause. Jack puts his hand out and makes everyone else lay their hands on top. He says, “Thanks. Again. For this. You don’t understand how much-”

PJ bounces their collective hands together. “We understand.”

They walk out. Jack tries not to look, but he sees his parents and all his brothers and sisters. His mother whistles, Mr. Avidan and Felix both yell, and Mark, stood on a box at the back, smiles big enough for it to cast an entire spotlight, but just on Jack.

He says, “Hi, we’re Jack and the Pretty Okays. Or, _I’m_ Jack and they’re the Pretty Okays. Or something. Okay. Thanks,” and they begin.

\---

The performance is good. It’s the best. People dance. Jack’s parents dance, and he says, “That’s my mum and dad dancing, say hi to them,” so everyone does. Felix and Marzia bounce up and down, front and centre; Mr. Avidan headbangs to songs that don’t entirely warrant it; Jack sings and dances and spins, looks out at an ocean of colours, and none of them are grey, there’s no grey at all.

At some point Dan politely tugs on his sleeve and so Jack says, “For a special surprise, Dan is going to sing this next song. It’s about Phil. I can’t see him out there, but I know he’s there. He didn’t sneak in, I swear. Uh, Dan wrote this song for you, Phil, and I didn’t clarify that last time, which caused some confusion, so-”. 

The dancing stops, momentarily, and most people clear to get some drinks, but Dan doesn’t seem to care because Phil stays, staring up at him, the cheap hall disco lights tripping moonbeams across his face. Jack is meant to do backing vocals but doesn’t, knowing that he would just drown out the sweetness of Dan’s voice, and so he just sits, cross-legged, on stage and listens. He looks at Mark, at Marzia and Felix gently waltzing, at Mark, at his parents, at Mark, at Mark, and then at Mark. 

Everyone stampedes back in almost as soon as Jack says, “Dan Howell, everybody. There’s another ballad coming up later, so I expect you to stay for that, thanks.”

He loses track of time, of everything, surrenders himself to the colours, the bouncy one-two step around the stage, the jumping beside PJ, the stealing of Wade’s other set of sticks and trying to drum alongside him (which doesn’t go down well). He eventually has to look at their set list, sellotaped to the base of his microphone stand and abruptly says, “Oh, this is our other ballad, guys. It’s a song about Mark Fischbach. Who makes me speechless.” 

Felix yells, “That’s impossible!”

“Speechless in the best way.”

Everyone clears again because college students are fickle, and so he sits on the edge of the stage, dangles his legs, and sings directly to Mark, who stares right back at him from under the flame of his hair. He sings too fast, his words tripping over themselves and spinning wildly into mixtures of each other, but it’s good. He thinks it’s good. Mark, who raises a hand into the air like he could catch each letter from Jack’s mouth, seems to think it’s good. 

“A song for Mark,” he says, at the end. “Who is the brightest colour I’ve ever seen. Actually, you’re all colours. I never saw them until I met you. I’m not drunk, to answer whoever just yelled that. And I’m not high either. My parents are here, thanks. Anyway, a song for Mark. Who I love.”

The last two songs are a complete fever dream of noise and colours. They finish with all four of them staying on stage for the first time, arms around each other’s shoulders. Jack says, “Thanks, we were The Pretty Okays,” and Felix, loyal as ever, yells, “the more than pretty okays!”, so he ends their best ever show by saying, “Thank you, Felix.”

They don’t even go backstage. Dan hops right off the stage to get to Phil, PJ shrugs and follows, and Wade tries to stagedive, something that only Mr. Avidan is prepared for.

Mark appears, from nowhere, and says, arms outstretched, “I’ll catch you.”

Jack says, “Okay,” and swoons right off, princess style. 

Mark ends up holding him like they’re about to walk over the threshold of their marital home which is, of course, the exact moment that his parents decide they want to meet Mark. “Jack,” his mother says, standing in front of their pose. “You’re so dramatic.” But it’s fond; it’s not _Why are you like this?_ or _Where did you come from?_ , it’s a statement of fact. “We’ve had a lovely evening.”

“You look very at home there,” his father says, and then attempts to shake Mark’s hand. 

“On stage or _here_?” Jack gestures to himself.

“Well, both, I suppose.”

When his parents have wandered away to talk to Ms. Wojcicki, Mark presses his mouth to Jack’s ear and says, quiet enough for just him to hear, “Thank you for my song. And I love you too. I mean, obviously. You know, obviously. You know I can’t do songs, and you know I can’t-”

Jack says, “I know. Obviously.”

Mark laughs. “Of course, _obviously_. It only took you  nine months to actually believe it.”

Jack says, “I know, I know,” and then Mark has to let go of him so that Felix, flying in from stage left, can jump right into his arms.

\---

Two days later he and Dan are both in Ms. Wojcicki’s office, staring, confusedly, at two identical acceptance letters to University College to study English and Music. Jack doesn’t feel the disappointment that he thought he would. He doesn’t feel trapped, or stifled. He feels happy and content.

“It hasn’t been so bad, though,” Dan says, thoughtfully. “This whole thing?”

Jack repeats, “This whole thing?” but he’s learnt, somewhere along the way, somewhere during this tentative friendship that seems to have sprung up between them, that Dan deliberately downplays things that he really enjoys. “I guess not.”

“We could carry on with it,” Dan continues. “In uni. If you wanted. You don’t have to, but, I thought, we’re going to the same place, so-”

“I’d like that,” Jack interrupts. “I really would. We’ve got all of these bookings, and your songs, and _my_ songs, and all of the-”

The carefully nonchalant expression on Dan’s face falls away. He says, “Okay,” smiles with both dimples, “Okay, then.”

“We should maybe write some happier songs, though.”

“I think we’ll probably find that a bit easier now,” Dan replies.

\---

The photos, in the end, could really have only been taken by someone who is in love with him. Jack has to go and look at Felix’s pebble photos in an attempt to catch his breath, to slow his fluttering heart down a beat or two. There’s no possible way that anyone can look at them without knowing. And yet here they are, pinned up on the classroom wall for anyone to see. There may as well not be anyone else in the band, aside from a few shots of Wade in full-flow, some of PJ with his curls bouncing, and a couple of Dan (some of which have been given, privately, to Phil).

“Well, _duh_ ,” Felix says, but fondly. Jack is hiding in his section of the final year exhibition, near a photograph of a twig, black and white, floating through midair. It’s called _I wish that you were happier where you are because where you are is not so bad_. “Why are you over on my side? Go and stand next to them. Be proud.”

Mark has taken two photos of Jack on the roof. In the first his hair is brown, and he’s looking across the harbour. He looks sad, pensive. In the second his hair is green, he’s looking down at Mark and smiling, big, with all his teeth, mouth open on a word that Jack knows is _why_ because he’d been saying _Why are you taking my photo?_. He looks happy, content. Mark had said _Because I like looking at you_.

Jack stands next to that one, nods at everyone’s double-takes as if to say, yep, that’s me, my boyfriend took it. When Mark finally comes back from circling the room he says, “Wow, you like me a lot.”

Mark shrugs, navy suit slightly too small for his shoulders. “You’re alright.”

Jack laughs. “Yeah, sure.”

“I’m nearly done here.” Mark waves his hand, full of letters and slips, at Jack. “Couple of college recs, a few people wanting to buy stuff.”

“A _couple_ of college recs?” Jack says, heart sinking, a tiny bit. 

“Yep. But only one I want to go to, so-”

“Really, where’s that?”

“I thought University College,” Mark says, trying to be casual.

“That’s where I’m going,” Jack says, not sounding casual at all.

“Is it really? I had no idea.” Mark attempts sarcasm but, unsurprisingly, is pretty bad at it.

Jack says, “you’re really-”

“-and it’s definitely not the main reason why I picked it.”

“ _Stop_. You’re really going there? With me?”

“I’m really going there with you.”

Jack, for the first time in a while, is truly speechless. 

Mark, fondly, says, “You’re not using your words again. What are you saying to me in there?” He taps his index finger, gently, to Jack’s forehead.

Jack’s thoughts, currently, are an entire orchestra of _Do you know that you’re the first person to ever actually want to go somewhere with me?_ , and what comes out is, “Are you sure? That’s, like, three years with me. At a minimum. Most people would find that a lot.”

“I’m not most people. And to me that wouldn’t be enough. How about the years afterwards too?”

Jack could cry. He thinks, for a horrible moment, that he might and has to look away from Mark to stop it happening. He says, “That sounds good,” when it’s pretty clear that good means _like everything I’ve ever wanted_.

Mark watches him, amused and fond. “Let’s take the boat out. After this.”

Jack blinks. “I don’t know. What if we don’t come back?”

“Do you want to come back?”

Jack thinks. “Yes. I do.”

“Me too.”

\---

The houses are pastel colours, huge blocks of candy along a green and blue coastline. The spray from the sea jumps in the air, catches on Jack’s face, and forms raindrops all over Mark’s smart jacket. Jack holds a hand out, tries to grab at the surf, looks over at the harbour, looks at his roof from the other side. Dan texts _show tonight, remember, thor’s bar_ into their band group chat, which starts an immediate setlist debate that he ignores, for the moment.

There are colours all along the shoreline, all over the island, he realises, finally. Greens and browns and coppers, all the colours of people walking along the coast, everyone unique. He just never noticed them before.

Mark says, “If you’d told me two months ago that I actually managed to get you to _speak_ to me, let alone get you out on the boat with me, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“I spoke to you all the time,” Jack says. “It was just mostly in my head.”

“I could never work out why I was the only person you were quiet with.”

“You’re the only person I’m _myself_ with. I got sent out of so many classes, so many detentions, and you were the only person who told me that you knew how I felt. Everyone else thought I was just Jack, you know, really loud and accidentally disruptive.”

Mark waits a second, watches the sea spray catch in the peppermint of Jack’s hair, and says, “That’s not all you are. I always knew that. I knew that from the moment I saw you on your roof, back when your hair was brown and you used to look at the boats like they were going to help you escape something.”

“I thought they _were_ ,” Jack says. “But I guess I didn’t really need to escape from anything.”

Mark says, “The same three sentences to you every Tuesday and Thursday. I can remember every word of-”

“You used to say hi, can you pass me the red pen please and then thanks,” Jack interrupts. “And then you said I like your hair and it was the best thing anyone had ever said to me.”

Mark laughs, startled with joy, and says, “And look at you now. Writing songs about me and everything.”

“I’ll write more songs about you. I could write _a thousand_ songs about you.”

Mark touches his hand, very lightly, to Jack’s shirt, to his heart, and says, “I’ll take a thousand photos of you. It’s not quite as impressive, but I’ll do it.”

Jack kisses him, it’s awkward with the swaying motion of the boat, and the water hitting their cheeks, but also perfect. He curls his fingers in Mark’s crimson hair and says, “I’ll do a whole show of songs about you. All my words. Everything I didn’t say.”

Mark’s mouth curves into a smile that Jack feels instead of sees. 

They can’t stand like that forever, as much as Jack wants to. Mark has to go back to steering the boat and Jack being in his immediate vicinity while he does that is too much of a distraction so he returns to sitting on the side, running his hand through the sea and looking at the coast. All the colours that he couldn’t see. It’s not grey. It never was, really. 

“You’re looking at it like you’re seeing it for the first time,” Mark says.

“I feel like I am.”

Mark beams. “Because I’m here?”

“Because you’re here,” Jack says.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I wrote this mostly as an apology to any septiplier fans who read the art thief fic and were sad (so if you’re a septiplier fan who read that, hello, I wrote this for you!) 
> 
> \- huge thanks to the wonderful [oblivionsgrace](https://oblivionsgrace.tumblr.com/), who agreed to beta this when it was still supposed to be a tiny drabble, and was lovely and encouraging throughout (and if this fic is any good at all then it's pretty much down to her) <3 
> 
> \- wade's pre-wedding playlist can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/theblonde85/playlist/6JBSIC7AW62zMQ6dQtxCbE)
> 
> \- Title is from [“Changing Genres”](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/10/11) by Dean Young. The full quote is this utter loveliness:
> 
> I was satisfied with haiku until I met you,  
> jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5,  
> but now I want a Russian novel,  
> a 50-page description of you sleeping,  
> another 75 of what you think staring out  
> a window.
> 
> (I'm on tumblr at [leblonde](https://leblonde.tumblr.com/). Come say hi!)


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